200 Ona new Method of determining the Latitude. 
up from the N.W, in the night, and prevailed the next day 
from the same quarter. 
It is hoped that these observations will be deemed sufficient to 
establish a received opinion, That meteors are in general pro- 
gnostics of wind, or wind and rain. 
XLVI. On Mr.Ripp1e’s Claim to the Invention of a new Me- 
thod of determining the Latitude. By Mr. Henry ATKIN- 
SON. 
To Dr. Tilloch. 
Sir, — iF perusing the Number of the Philosophical Magazine 
for July, my attention was arrested by an article entitled “‘Re- 
marks on Mr. Riddle’s Claim to the Invention of a new Method 
of determining the Latitude.” As I happen to be acquainted 
with some circumstances connected with the insinuation thrown 
out by the writer, that Mr, Riddle obtained the first idea of the 
method of calculation under discussion from General B.’s paper, 
which y asserts was published ‘ before Mr. R. had said any 
thing about it, and the memoirs which followed were merely a 
continuation of the same or a somewhat similar method 2’— 
With respect to the former part of the assertion, I feel myself 
called upon, in justice to a most worthy and honourable indivi- 
dual, publicly to declare, that éo my certain knowledge Mr. Rid- 
dle had practised the method of determining the latitude de- 
scribed in his paper of October 21, 1818, as well as that given 
by General B. for determining the time ‘with’ accuracy, . dated 
« Paris, 23d November 1817,” previous to the period when this 
latter paper was written: and, from various circumstan¢es, I have 
every reason to believe that ‘he had practised them for some 
years before the period to which [ can speak from my own know- 
ledge. 
{ have now stated the principal cause of my addressing you on 
this subject ; yet insaddition, will you permit me, sir, to observe, 
that when Mr. Riddle found that General B. had laid a method 
of determining the latitude by a sextant or circle before so 
learned a body of men as the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with- 
out the slightest hint that it had ever been published before ; 
that this memoir was one selected for publication in the Trans- 
actions of the Society, without any notification that it was not 
new; I do not see how Mr. Riddle, knowing that he had pub- 
lished the same thing two years before, could well say less than 
he did: nor would it have been calculated to excite jany great © 
degree of surprise, had he claimed it, ‘as a discovery,” in much 
stronger 
