Sect. V.] Hydraulics, 49 



complete extant*. And it is worthy of observar 

 tion, that while he threw greater Jight tlian all 

 who had gone be'Vrf^ him on the subject which he 

 immediately undertook to illustrate, he furnished 

 an additional and very powerful argument in sup- 

 port of the Nemtonian system. 



The construction of Aqueducts has been render- 

 ed, by the labours of modern philosophers, more 

 simple, easy, and precise. And, in consequence 

 of these improvements, they have, within the last 

 century, greatly increased in number. For tlie 

 valuable experiments and discoveries which have 

 been made on this subject, we are principally in- 

 debted to the great hydraulic philosophers on 

 the continent, whose names were before men- 

 tioned. To those names may be added the di- 

 stinguished experimenters and observers, on the 

 same subject, Desaguliers, Belidor, de Parcieux, 

 and Perronet, who successively laboured to deduce 

 a system of doctrines from the numerous facts 

 before them; and whose very mistakes contribut- 

 ed to elucidate this obscure branch of science, 

 which, however, is yet far from being M\y under- 

 stood. 



* The abbe Bernardin de St. Pierre, in a late work, entitled 

 Etudes de la NaUire, rejects the Newtonian theory of Tides, and 

 ascribes this class of phenomena to the liquefaction of the polar 

 ice and snow. To this amiable writer the praise of ingenuity, 

 and of possessing a happy talent of amusing and interesting his 

 readers, cannot be denied. Neither can it be questioned that his 

 work contains a consid<?rable portion of sound and pleasing pliilo- 

 .sophy. But surely this and some other of his doctrines arc utterly 

 unworthy of a mind, which had been conversant \^ ith the inquiries 

 and the writings of the great practical philosophers oi the eigh- 

 teenth century. 



Vol, I. E 



