TAi-.I.K. 



TACK1N'.. 



1010 



then at r, compare it with C, and so on ; the order of inspection being 

 a.\, B4, cC, D</, Ac. Some persons examine best by the eye alum-, 

 other* by the ear also, repeating aloud. Each one must ascertain for 

 himself which practice is best for him ; but whatever it may be, it 

 should be varied. Alteration of position, motion of the hand or foot 

 occasionally to mark the transitions, change of the tone of repeating, 

 4c., are useful : it is hardly credible, to those who IIAV,- not tried, how 

 much the perceptions are dulled by the monotonous comparison of one 

 column of figures with another, or now many and how gross errors both 

 eye and ear, when tired, will suffer to pass. Persons who are not 

 much used to this labour might very well proceed as follows. Let 

 them request the printer to make, at his own discretion, a certain 

 number, say three, of mistakes (author-traps) in every page, carefully 

 registering them, but not on the manuscript. The author may then 

 be certain that he ought to detect three mistakes in every page, and 

 will know that he has been careless if he have not that number at 

 least. But at the same time, an author who has not reason for confi- 

 dence in himself, may very safely leave good manuscript tables entirely 

 to the printer, if he make the Utter understand that he does not intend 

 to correct till all is printed off, and will require every page containing 

 an error to be cancelled. No good printer would now refuse to engage 

 to furnish a fac-simile of a manuscript, on the simple condition of 

 being allowed to refer to the author for decision as to any doubtful 

 word or figure in the writing ; and the accuracy with which the first- 

 rate London * printers turn out their proofs, even where the manu- 

 script in criminally bad, is surprising. We have frequently looked at 

 page after page of table-matter more times than we should otherwise 

 have thought necessary, merely because the total absence of detected 

 error left it an unsettled point whether it was the excellence of the 

 proof, or a temporary suspension of our own quickness of perception, 

 which caused the absence in question. 



Catalogues of tables (separate) may be seen in the catalogue of the 

 Royal Society's Library; in Murhanl's ' Bibl. Math.;' in Lalanele's 

 ' Bibl. Astron.' (in virtue of the index) ; but there is nothing approach- 

 ing to even a moderately perfect catalogue. 



In the preceding article we have described, we believe, all the tables 

 of notk, whether in history or practice, so far as general tables of pure 

 mathematics are concerned. We have omitted those which relate only 

 to astronomy, life contingencies, or any other special application of 

 mathematics. As the article stood in the ' Penny Cyclopicdia,' we had 

 brought forward about 318 tables, of which 221 had been taken from 

 actual inspection, and the remainder from various authorities, very few 

 indeed from one only. In Lalande's ' Bibliographic Astronomique ' 

 there are 208 tables mentioned, including astronomital ones. In the 

 printed catalogue of the Royal Society's Library the entries under 

 tables, of every sort, mathematics, astronomy, navigation, geography, 

 meteorology, &c., are 536 in number, including from the merest tide- 

 table for one year up to the largest body of logarithms. And upon 

 looking at the appearances which the different catalogues present, we do 

 not find one in which 200, or even 1 00, tables of pure mathematics are 

 mentioned as having undergone the actual inspection of the compiler. 

 In the present article we have given about 457 tables, of which 332 are from 

 actual inspection. It would not, then, we suspect, be a very extensive 

 undertaking to make as complete a list of tables of all kinds as can 

 now be recovered ; and the undertaker of it might expect to be able 

 to verify about two out of three from inspection. 



In the present article some additions have been made, both of tables 

 and of facts alluding to tables already inserted, and several corrections. 

 We have not made any effort to include all the tables of the last few 

 years, preferring to direct our chief attention to the improvement of 

 the antiquarian part of our task. To this end we have examined anew 

 all the old tables which we could conveniently see. In reviewing our 

 work, we find that we have sometimes spoken of the decimal /,/> 

 a table, and sometimes of the radius to which it is constructed ; but 

 we do not mean that the old tables had decimal places, properly so 

 called. We must also remind the reader that this article is not liili/io- 

 graphical ; our affair is not with books as books, but with tables as 

 tables. Accordingly, the dscriptions of books are not fully given : 



Thin vw flrit published in 1842. In the spring of 1845, the Nautical 

 Almanac of the year was nearly exhausted, and it was necessary to reprint 

 it with the utmost speed. The Nautical Almanac contains more than 500 

 large octavo panes of numerical tables. Clowes and Ron, all revision being left 

 to their on n readers, performed the task in seventeen writing days, from the 

 commencement of the composition to the delivery in sheet*. The accm.u \ <>f 

 this reprint was never Impeached. A printer who was engaged upon an article 

 la which the above statement wat made, assured the author that he HUM In 

 wrong, that the reprint was made from standing type, as was proved by the 

 revision being intrusted to the printer : on which proper attestations were 

 procured from Clowes and Son and their overseers, and these we have seen. 

 F.tcn printer*, when their work is all of the ordii ary kind, arc not, It should 

 Mem, aware of the confidence due to those who arc habitually concerned with 

 such things as tables. This reprint, when it came to be examined, had only 

 thirty-three errata. The necessity occurred again in 1846, and, as :i]. ; 

 the advertisement to the second edition of that work, the reprint was fully done 

 (n tizlrm working days. Subsequent revision detected only twenty-two errata, 

 Mrcn of which were in tome copiti only, that is, due to hurried press-work. 

 There was then perceptible progress, both in ipeed and accuracy. 



ami their contents, except so far as they are the tables spoken of, are 

 win illy Hum it iced. 



TABLE, HOI.'X IX Tho most famous Round Table is that of Kin^ 

 Arthur, which is said in the old romances to have been constructed by 

 the wizard Merlin for Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father, from wlmm 

 it passed into the possession of Leodigan, or Leodegrance, king of 

 Camelard.or Carmalide, whose capital was Carshaise, and then came to 

 Arthur as the portion of his wife Guenevre, daughter of that monaivh. 

 The romance of the ' Mort d'Arthur ' says that Merlin made it " in 

 token of the roundness of the world;" according to the in< 

 romance of Merlin, it was made in imitation of one which had b, 

 up by Joseph of Arimathea in commemoration of that at which the 

 t \\i-h-i- apostles ate the last supper with their divine Master. The Round 

 Table is not mentioned at all by Geoffrey of Momnouth, cither in his 

 ' Chronicle,' or in his ' Life of Merlin ' in Latin verse ; but it i-i n 

 by his contemporary Wace, in his metrical ' Roman <le RoU d'-i 

 terre.' The Round Table was intended, to quote the analysis of the 

 romance of Merlin given by Kllis (' Specimens of Karly English Ro- 

 mances,' i.), " to assemble the best knights in the world." Tin 

 different accounts of the number of the Knights of the Round Table, 

 which indeed appears not to have been always the same. The romance 

 of Merlin, which states that Uther had no power to fill all the 

 makes that king nevertheless to have nominated 250 knights, and these 

 are also spoken of as forming the number of the order under Leo- 

 degrance. The ' Mort d'Arthur' makes Leodegrance say, in surrender- 

 ing it to Arthur, " I shall give him the Table Round, the which Uther 

 Pendragon gave me, and when it is full complete, there is a hundred 

 knights and fifty ; and, as for an hundred good knights, I have i 

 but I lack fifty, for so many have been slain in my days." Of the fifty 

 knights that wore wanted, Merlin was at the moment only able to find 

 twenty-eight for Arthur ; but some were added afterwards. Other 

 accounts again make the complete number under Arthur to have been 

 only a hundred. 



It is asserted by some of the chroniclers that some time before 

 Edward III. instituted the order of the Garter, he established in the 

 castle of Windsor a fraternity of twenty-four knights, ami am 

 them a round table, in imitation of that of Arthur, with a chamber in 

 which it was placed, in what is yet known as the Round Tower. 

 Bishop Percy, in his ' Reliques of Antient English Poetry,' remarks 

 " that the round table was not peculiar to the reign of King Arthur, 

 but was common in all the ages of chivalry. The proclaiming a great 

 tournament (probably with some peculiar solemnities) was called hold- 

 ing a Round Table." And he quotes a passage from Dugdale, in which 

 that learned antiquary, describing a tournament held at Keuil worth by 

 Roger de Mortimer, in the reign of Edward I., says, " Then began the 

 Round Table, so called by reason that the place wherein they practised 

 those feats was environed with a strong wall made in a round form." 

 Percy adds that Matthew Paris frequently calls jousts and tournaments 

 Hastiluiliu Memre Rotundas. These round tables were probably a con- 

 trivance on the principle of the modern Round Robin, to prevent any 

 dispute about precedency. There are several circular elevations in 

 different parts of England which are still called Arthur's Round 

 Tables. 



TABLES, TWELVE. [TWELVE TABLES.] 



TACK is the technical term in Scotland for a lease, whether of 

 lauds or edifices ; the rent is called the tack-duty, and the tenant the 

 tacksman. The Scotch lease, however long its duration, is purely a 

 contract, and does not partake at least in questions between landlord 

 and tenant of the peculiarities of the feudal system. In early times 

 it is possible to trace something like an inferior system of vassalage in 

 the nature of the agriculturist's tenure ; but as all descriptions . 

 manent estates could be constituted in the laud by the adaptation of 

 the feudal usages, there was no temptation to convert the contract for 

 the limited occupation and use of the land into a means of constitut- 

 ing a semi-proprietary right in it. The system of leases accordingly, 

 as one of mere letting and hiring, took its principles from tin- I . 

 contract of locatin cunductio, the right of the lessee or tacksman being 

 so purely personal that it was ineffectual against a party acquiring the 

 lands by purchase from the lessor. Leasehold rights, however, in 

 questions of succession, and in the for-rn of attachment, employable 

 by creditors, have by usage come into the position of real or heritable 

 property, and may now be registered and transferred by the appropri- 

 ate forms of transfer like estates in fee simple. 



Writing is necessary to constitute a lease, although possession dur- 

 ing the part that may remain over a year begun, may be held as a right 

 from sufferance and acquiescence in its commencement. Without 

 writing the term is for a year only. 



TACKING. The evolutions of a ship when contending with an 

 adverse wind are called tacking; and the course upon which a ship 

 lies is called its "tack," and whether the wind blow on the star- 

 board- or port-side, these are called starboard or port tacks. In endea- 

 vouring to move a ship under sail towards the point from which the 

 wind blows, she must necessarily be close hauled, that is, her sails 

 must be so braced as to enable her to proceed as near the wind as 

 possible. 



We may illustrate the operation of tacking by reference to a similar 

 movement in ourselves, whether on foot or horseback, when we mount 

 a steep incline on shore; for, instead of facing the inclinaC 



