274 LIMITS AND FLUXIONS 



may be deemed, on the whole, an improvement on the 

 method of ultimate ratios. " 



Remar ks 

 232. The first part of the nineteenth century 

 marks a turning-point in the study and teaching of 

 mathematics in Great Britain. i\ttention has been 

 directed to the efforts of Woodhouse to introduce 

 the higher analysis of the BernoulHs, Euler, Clairaut, 

 and Lagrange. His efforts were strongly and ably 

 seconded by three other young men at Cambridge, 

 John Frederick William Herschel, Charles Babbage, 

 and George Peacock, who used to breakfast together 

 on Sunday mornings, and in 18 12 founded the 

 " Analytical Society at Cambridge," for the promo- 

 tion, as Babbage humorously expressed it, of *' the 

 principles of pure D-ism in opposition to the Dot-digo. 

 of the University." The translation into English of 

 Lacroix's Elementary Treatise and the publication, 

 in 1820, of Exaniples with their solutions, brought 

 the more perfect notation of Leibniz and the re- 

 fined analytical methods to the attention of young 

 students of mathematics in England.^ 



^ Before the nineteenth century, the use in England of the Leibnizian 

 notation dz and Jydz is exceedingly rare. In our § 54 we saw that 

 about the beginning of the eighteenth century these symbols were used 

 by John Craig in articles published in the London Philosophical 

 Transactions. When criticising Euler, Benjamin Robins once used 

 the Leibnizian notation ; see our § 142. Mr. Philip E. B, Jourdain has 

 brought to my attention the fact that the sign of integration f occurs 

 also in a hook, entitied, Second Volume of ihe Instrtutions given in 

 the Drawitt^ School established by the Dtiblin Society. . . . Under the 

 Direction of [oseph Fenti, heretofore Professor of Philosophy in the 

 University of Nantes. Bub/in, UDCCLXXll. De Morgan refers to 

 this work in a letter to Hamilton. See Graves' Life of Sir William 

 Rowan Hamilton^ voi. iii, p. 488. See also our Addenda^ p. 2S9. 



