54- THE ALLEGED INFERIORITY OF GREAT BRITAIN 



erected, upon principles deduced from the direct experimental 

 investigation of the tenacity of iron, combined with an ade- 

 quate knowledge and application of the peculiar properties 

 belonging to the Catenarian curve ; and although the latter 

 subject presents some difficulties, arising from an alteration 

 induced in the curvature of the chains, by the difference of the 

 weight each link respectively supports, &c., yet the Suspension- 

 Bridges of Britain have evinced, without exception, the sta- 

 bility of the principles on which they have been constructed. 

 On the other hand, to select an example from the works of 

 one of the most distinguished engineers in France, the most 

 profound investigation of the theory of these structures (giving 

 rise to an unqualified condemnation of the principles which 

 have guided British engineers in their erection), in the hands 

 of M. Navier, has not precluded the failure of the Sus- 

 pension-Bridge erected by him over the Seine, opposite the 

 Hotel des Invalids, at Paris, from so simple a cause as the giv- 

 ing way of the attachments of the chains. 



While, therefore, we agree entirely in the hope that the 

 higher branches of Mathematical inquiry will in future be 

 more extensively pursued among us, we may be permitted to 

 infer, that the ardent cultivation of pure Physics in this country, 

 such as the researches of Davy, and Wollaston, and Kater, 

 the experiments on the strength and other properties of mate- 

 rials, instituted by the engineers of our great public works, 

 the investigation of the properties of vapours, connected with 

 the successive inventions for improving the steam-engine, the 

 prosecution of Geology by the Geological Society of London, 

 &c. &c., has had an important and beneficial effect, in contri- 

 buting to preserve us from a too exclusive devotion to those 

 analytical refinements, which, when applied to imperfect data, 

 produce errors, which are injurious in direct proportion to the 

 intrinsic elevation and consequent authority^ of the methods of 

 calculation employed. 



It is with much hesitation that I have presumed to enter 

 upon the merits of a question, at once of so much importance, 

 and so much difficulty ; but to say a few words upon it, at the 

 present epoch of affairs in the scientific world, seemed essential 

 to the objects of this memoir. Many facts illustrative of what 

 I have remarked will occur to my scientific readers ; and I may 

 adduce one from a subject to which I have myself devoted con- 

 siderable attention. Various theories have been devised to ac- 

 count for the phaenomena of those Meteors, which, under the 

 sensible form of balls of fire, occasionally traverse the atmo- 

 sphere, and cast down upon the earth masses of ignited iron, or 

 showers of red-hot stones, forming a class of bodies termed, 

 collectively, Meteorites. Two of the most eminent mathemati- 



