92 On the present State of the (Fes. 
that is wanted to place British science upon a footing of equality at 
least with that of any nation in Europe. The same remark will 
apply to the determination of the density of the earth from the ob- 
servations made on Mount Schehelian by Dr. Hutton, and the new 
system of gunnery founded on experiment by the same author ; the 
former having been carried on under the patronage of the Royal 
Society, and the latter under that of the Board of Ordnance. The 
Nautical Tables by Mendoza Rios were also handsomely patronized 
by some of our public boards. We ought also to mention here the 
large Logarithmic Tables of Taylor,* constructed under the direc- 
tions of the Board of Longitude. 
There is something extremely unpleasant in any attempt to enu- 
merate the performances of English authors as contrasted with those * 
of similar works by foreigners, or I would now go over a recital of 
all the principal English authors, and show that for every work that 
our press has produced, an equal or superior one of the same class 
may be found in France; | shall, therefore, merely mention De- 
lambre’s and Vince’s Astronomy as equivalent performances, and 
then leave every British mathematician, who has favoured the public 
with any production, to select for himself an equivalent work in 
France; after which Iam convinced that all those which I have 
already enumerated will remain unredeemed by any English 
claimant. 
As to those publications which fall within the class of school 
books or elementary treatises, they form no part of our present 
consideration ; our books of this class are probably superior to those 
of France, unless indeed the idea of simplification (which is the 
great object of this class of writers) is not carried too far, so as to 
render what ought to be a mental exercise a mere practical and 
mechanical operation, which I am afraid is too frequently the case, 
The comparison that is thus drawn between the English and 
foreign works of this class is more favourable to us than in the 
former enumeration of original performances; but after all it must 
be considered as a very unfavourable specimen of English science. 
With regard to the third class, viz. of new editions and transla- 
tions of ancient authors, we shall be found still more deficient. 
What have we to produce against the splendid edition of the 
Almagest of Ptolomy, in Greek, Latin, and French, by Halmer ; 
the new Greek edition, with a Latin and French translation of All 
the Works of Euclid, by Peyrard; the French translation of the 
Works of Diophantus and of Apollonius, by the same author; both 
of which are either now published, or in the course of publication ; 
* Nothing shows more clearly the little attention paid to mathematical pursuits 
in this country than the following fact: that 400 copies of the above important 
work, aud a great many of the Sexagesimal Tables of the same author, are now 
deposited for stowage in an old windmill on the borders of one of the lakes in 
_ Westmoreland, to which place they were lately removed by the nephew of the 
author, there not being a sufficient call for them to defray the expenses of ware- 
house room and insurance wiile in London, 
a 
