194 Pofessor RigaucTs Account of James Stirling. 



1764." It appears from the sale- catalogue of Dr Hutton's 

 library, that he was in possession of both, and it is there- 

 fore extraordinary that he should have expressed himself so as 

 to give the false impression of there having been more than 

 one edition. It was originally printed for Strahan by Bowyer, 

 although Nichols, in his anecdotes of that great printer, makes 

 no mention of it. From the scarceness of the copies with 1730 

 in the title-page, it is fair to conclude that they did not obtain 

 any extensive circulation ; in 1753, (a date which is still more 

 scarce, and which is noticed by no writer on bibliography,) 

 Manby on Ludgate Hill endeavoured to bring the work again 

 into notice ; and lastly, in 1764, Whiston and White, in Fleet 

 Street, became the agents to supply the demand for it. This 

 last is the date most commonly met with ; but any one who 

 will take the trouble of comparing the books, will find that 

 there never was more than one edition, the copies of which 

 have gone out to the world at several times with different title- 

 pages. 



Hutton mentions that an English translation of this work 

 by " a Mr Francis HoUiday" was published in 1749. Holli- 

 day printed a collection which he called Syntagma Matheseos, 

 (8vo, Lond. 1745.) In 1745, he also began a publication, 

 which was to be continued quarterly, under the title of Mis- 

 cellanea Curiosa Mathematica, of which he completed one vo- 

 lume in nine numbers ; he likewise printed five numbers of a 

 second volume, and began a sixth, which was never finished. 

 The work stopped in 1755, possibly in consequence of the 

 death of E. Cave, the publisher of it, which had taken place 

 in the preceding year. Holliday was then master of the free 

 grammar-school at Haughton Park, near Retford, in Notting- 

 hamshire- In 1756, he published an easy introduction to prac- 

 tical gunnery, or the art of engineering, and in 1777, he print- 

 ed an introduction to fluxions, having at this time become vi- 

 car of Markham and Bothamsall in Notts. 



Holliday seems to have paid great attention to Stirling's 

 writings. In the Syntagma Matheseos he gave a translation 

 of the paper on the differential method which had been insert- 

 ed in the Philosophical Transactions, and in the second vo- 

 lume of the Miscellanea Curiosa Mathematica, (p. 162,) he 



