216 ~- The Rev. Mr. Whewell’s Remarks on a Note 
made in the first. I had passed over this point, as not bear- 
ing materially on the dispute respecting the publication of 
Flamsteed’s observations, which appears to have attracted the 
largest share of the notice of the public; and with a view of 
abridging, as much as justice would permit, this unprofitable 
discussion of the errors and weaknesses of those whom we 
have been accustomed to admire: but a few words on the 
subject just mentioned may serve to show how much of mistake 
there is in such statements. 
That the Newtonian lunar theory was published the second 
time without any acknowledgement of what it owed to Flam- 
steed, is not true. Newton’s “Theory of the Moon,” on its 
first appearance after the use of Flamsteed’s observations, and 
on the only occasion (so far as I know) when it was published 
with that title, was inserted in David Gregory’s Astronomia 
Physice et Geometrice Elementa, printed in 1702. It is there 
stated (p. 332) that the illustrious author had made the calcu- 
lations agree very nearly with the phznomena, “ as he had 
proved by very many places of the moon observed by the ce- 
lebrated Mr. Flamsteed.” And the elements of the theory 
are there by Newton referred to Greenwich. With this book, 
Flamsteed was on various accounts much discontented. One 
great reason was, that Gregory had said, “ ‘The most solid 
walls, and even rocks and mountains, are not absolutely 
steady ;” ‘ This,” says Flamsteed, “is a‘fling at my wall-arc.” 
(Flamsteed, p. 204.) But I do not see that he here complains. 
of any omission of his name in the Lunar Theory. Newton 
had previously communicated his theory to Flamsteed, in the 
shape in which the observer could understand and use it 
(Flamsteed, p. 72); and though Flamsteed speaks contemp- 
tuously and disparagingly of it, he employed it in constructing 
lunar tables, which he called a Theory. It is of this that he 
says, a little before the publication of Gregory’s work, (p. 211,) 
‘‘ T call it mine, and shall own nothing of Mr. Newton’s la- 
bours, till he fairly owns what he has had from the Observa- 
tory.” ‘The obligations of the theory of universal gravitation 
to Flamsteed, were of the same nature as its obligations to 
Tycho Brahe, who believed that the sun went round the earth. 
The observations were highly useful; but it would have been 
an absurd perversion of the truth to have called the observer 
one of the authors of the theory. Yet it is probable that no- 
thing less than this, and probably not this, would have satis- 
fied the discontented and morbid mind of Flamsteed. "What 
was stated in Gregory’s book was just; and I do not see 
what more could have been briefly said. 
By the time of the publication of the second edition of the 
