PASCAL. 



?)its with the rest of the genus, but builds 

 its nest with peculiar care aud elegance, 

 securing 1 , in the completest manner, the 

 two important circumstances of dryness 

 :uul warmth ; the silken threads of aure- 

 lias constitute a principal article for those 

 purposes. It is active even to restlessness, 

 perpetually flying backwards and for- 

 wards, and running up and down the 

 branches of trees in every possible direc- 

 tion. It possesses all the fullness of plu- 

 mage of the owl. 



PASCAL (BLAISE), a respectable 

 French mathematician and philosopher, 

 and one of the greatest geniuses and best 

 writers that country lias produced. He 

 was born at Clermont in Auvergne, in the 

 year 1623. His father, Stephen Pascal, 

 was president of the Court of Aids in his 

 province : he was also a very learned 

 man, an able mathematician, and a friend 

 of Des Cartes. Having an extraordinary 

 tenderness for this child, his only son, he 

 quitted his province, and settled at Paris 

 in 1631, that he might be quite at leisure 

 to attend to his son's education, which he 

 conducted himself, and young Pascal ne- 

 ver had any other master. From his in- 

 fancy Blaise gave proofs of a very extra- 

 ordinary capacity. He was extremely 

 inquisitive ; desiring to know the reason 

 of every thing ; and when good reasons 

 were not given him, he would seek for 

 better ; nor would he ever yield his as- 

 sent but upon such as appeared to him 

 well grounded. What is told of his man- 

 ner of learning the mathematics, as well 

 as the progress he quickly made in 

 that science, seems almost miraculous. 

 His father, perceiving in him an extraor- 

 dinary inclination to reasoning, was afraid 

 lest the knowledge of the mathematics 

 might hinder his learning the languages, 

 so necessary as a foundation to all sound 

 learning. He therefore kept him as much 

 as he could from all notions of geometry, 

 locked up all his books of that kind, 'and 

 refrained even from speaking of it in his 

 presence. He could not however pre- 

 vent his son from musing on that science : 

 and one day in particular he surprised 

 him at work with charcoal upon his cham- 

 ber floor, and in the midst of figures. 

 The father asked him what he was doing : 

 I am searching, says Pascal, for such a 

 thing; which was just the same as the 32d 

 proposition of the 1st book of Euclid. He 

 asked him then how he came to think of 

 this : it was, said Blaise, because I found 

 out such another thing; and so, going back- 

 ward, and using the names of bar and 

 round, he came at length to the definitions 



and axioms he had formed to himself. 

 From this time he had full liberty to in- 

 dulge his genius in mathematical pursuits. 

 He understood Euclid's Elements as soon 

 as he cast his eyes upon them. At six- 

 teen years of age he wrote a treatise on 

 Conic Sections, which was accounted a 

 a great effort of genius ; and therefore it 

 is no wonder that Des Cartes, who had 

 been in Holland a long time, upon read- 

 ing it, should choose to believe that M. 

 Pascal the father was the real author of 

 it. At nineteen he contrived an admira- 

 ble arithmetical machine, which would 

 have done credit as an invention to any 

 man versed in science. About this time 

 his health became impaired, so that he 

 was obliged to suspend his labours for the 

 space of four years. After this, having 

 seen Torricelli's experiment respecting 

 a vacuum and the weight of the air, he 

 turned his thoughts towards these ob- 

 jects, and undertook several new experi- 

 ments, by which he was fully convinced 

 of the general pressure of the atmo- 

 sphere ; and from this discovery he drew 

 many useful and important inferences. 

 He composed also a large treatise, in 

 which he fully explained this subject, and 

 replied to all the objections that had been 

 started against it. As he afterwards 

 thought this work rather too prolix, and 

 being fond of brevity and precision, he 

 divided it into two small treatises, one of 

 which he entitled, " A Dissertation on the 

 Equilibrium of Fluids ;" and the other, 

 " An Essay on the Weight of the Atmo- 

 sphere." "These labours procured Pascal 

 so much reputation, that the greatest 

 mathematicians and philosophers of the 

 age proposed various questions to him, 

 and consulted him respecting such diffi- 

 culties as they could not resolve. Upon 

 one of these occasions he discovered the 

 solution of a problem proposed by Mer- 

 senne, which had baffled the penetration 

 of all that had attempted it. This pro- 

 blem was to determine the curve describ- 

 ed in the air by the nail of a coach-wheel, 

 while the machine is in motion ; which 

 curve was thence called a roullette, but 

 now commonly known by the name of 

 cycloid. Pascal offered a reward of forty 

 pistoles to any one who should give a sa- 

 tisfactory answer to it. No person hav- 

 ing succeeded, he published his own at 

 Paris ; but under the name of A. d'Etton- 

 ville. This was the last work which he 

 published in the mathematics; his in- 

 firmities, from a delicate constitution, 

 though still young, now increasing so 

 much, that he was under the necessity of 



