484 EDITOR'S NOTES. 



remaining difference, I own that I am individually 

 inclined to give the preference to the pendulum result. 

 This preference may, no doubt, be in part owing to a 

 natural bias in favour of what I have been myself 

 engaged in, and, so far, be entitled to the less weight : 

 yet it is to be remembered that the pendulum result 

 has the advantage of nearly ten degrees of greater 

 meridional extension than the measured arcs, and that 

 the latter have been limited almost exclusively to the 

 one (the northern) hemisphere, whilst pendulum ex- 

 periments have been extended over both hemispheres 

 with almost concurrent results. 



In conclusion, there is one advantage which cannot 

 be denied to the pendulum over the measurement of arcs, 

 namely, the far less expenditure of time, means, and 

 skilled labour which it requires. The time that inter- 

 vened between the proposition to give the pendulum 

 experiments the widest practicable extension between the 

 eo^ator and the pole, and the completion of that un- 

 dertaking and the publication of the results, was barely 

 five years. The experiments and the calculations were the 

 work of a single person ; and the conclusion from them, 

 widely as it then differed from received opinions, has 

 since stood as the mark towards which the subsequent 

 results of the measurement of degrees have progressively 

 approximated ; and which, after a lapse of more than 

 thirty years, bids fair to prove the true measure of the 

 general figure of our planet. 



