304 NOTES TO BOOK VII. 



corrections of the lunar apogee and node were collected 

 from Flamsteed's tables and observations independently of 

 their suggestion by Newton as the results of Theory 

 (Supp. p. 692 note, and p. 698), appears to me not to be 

 adequately supported by the evidence given. 



(K.) p. 217. Mr. Baily (Supp. p. 702) says that 

 Mayer's Nouvelles Tables de la Lune in 1753, published 

 upwards of fifty years after Gregory's Astronomy, may be 

 considered as the first lunar tables formed solely on New- 

 ton's principles. Though Wright in 1732 publised New 

 and Correct Tables of the Lunar Motions according to the 

 Newtonian Theory, Newton's rules were in them only par- 

 tially adopted. In 1735 Leadbetter published his Uranos- 

 copia, in which those rules were more fully followed. But 

 these Newtonian Tables did not supersede Flamsteed's 

 Horroxian Tables, till both were supplanted by those of 

 Mayer. 



(L.) p. 231. The improvement of the Tables of the 

 Sun, Moon, and Planets, has gone on, subsequently to 

 the time referred to in the text. In 1812 Burckhardt's 

 Tables de la Lune were published by the Bureau des 

 Longitudes. A comparison of these and Burg's with a 

 considerable number of observations gave 9-100ths of a 

 second as the mean error of the former in the Moon's 

 longitude, while the mean-error of Burg's was 18-100ths. 

 The preference was therefore accorded to Burckhardt's. 



Yet the Lunar Tables were still as much as 30 

 seconds wrong in single observations. This circum- 

 stance, and Laplace's expressed wish, induced the French 

 Academy to offer a prize for a complete and purely theo- 

 retical determination of the lunar path, instead of a 

 determination resting, as hitherto, partly upon theory and 



