220 Contributions to Scientific Bibliography. 



ceeded by others of a similar description, if they arc found to 

 contribute even to liberal amusement. 



Briggs's Arithmetica LogarUhmica, 1624. 



Dr Hutton gives an account of " this stupendous work,'" as 

 he justly calls it, in his well-known history of logarithms. 

 He furnishes an ample detail of its contents ; but in some of 

 the particulars respecting the book itself, his description ap- 

 pears to require correction. The book contains, as he observes, 

 the logarithms of all numbers, from 1 to 20000, and from 

 90000 to 100000 carried to fourteen places of decimals ; but he 

 adds, "some writers say that there was another chiliad, namely, 

 from 100000 to 101000 ; but none of the copies that I have seen 

 have more than the 30000 above-mentioned, and they were all 

 regularly terminated in the usual way with the word Finis.'" 

 Gardiner, in the preface to his quarto Tables of Logarithms, 

 (London, 1742,) mentions his having particularly used this chi- 

 liad, but it certainly is hardly ever to be found. There are, how- 

 ever, at least two copies of it in existence ; the one is in the Savi- 

 lian Library at Oxford, and the other is in the possession of the 

 Earl of Macclesfield. It is evident that it formed no part of 

 Briggs's original design, but was printed separately after the 

 great work. It consists of only a few leaves, and these cir- 

 cumstances will account for its having been so generally lost. 



From the letters with which the different sheets are marked, 

 it is clear that Briggs's original intention was not to leave his 

 great work in the imperfect state in which it has come down 

 to us ; and indeed Wingate says in his preface to Tabula?* Lo- 

 garithmica? (Lond. 1633,) that after the publication in 1624, 

 he " endeavoured, with all the expedition that he and his 

 friends could make, to publish a perfect table, which should 

 contain the logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 100000. 

 Howbeit, before it could be quite finished, that table which he 

 intended was brought home to him ready calculated and pub- 

 lished in the low countries without his consent or notice, he 

 having directed an easy way (in his book above-mentioned) 



* These are only for 7, not 8 place of decimals, as Hutton describes 

 them. 



