8 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1665. 



lows of the Royal Society, are now brought to a wonderful perfection. The 

 said M. Huygens, having been informed of the success of the experiment made 

 by Major Holmes, wrote to a friend at Paris a letter to this effect : — 



'^ Major Holmes at his return has made a relation concerning the usefulness 

 of pendulums, which surpasses my expectation : I did not imagine that the 

 watches of this first structure would succeed so well, and I had reserved my 

 main hopes for the new ones. But, seeing that those have already served so 

 successfully, and that the others are yet more just and exact, I have the more 

 reason to believe that the finding of the longitude will be brought to perfection. 

 In the mean time I shall tell you, that the States did receive my proposition, 

 when I desired of them a patent for these new watches, and the recompense 

 set apart for the invention in case of success ; and that without any difficulty 

 they have granted my request, commanding me to bring one of these watches 

 into their assembly, to explicate unto them the invention, and the application 

 thereof to the longitude ; which I have done to their contentment." 



The Character of M. de Fermat, Counsellor of Parliament at 

 Tholouse, lately deceased. N° 1, p.l5. ^ 



This excellent person died in l663. He was a general scholar and a man 

 of universal genius ; cultivating jurisprudence, poetry, and mathematics, but 

 especially the latter, for his amusement. Fermat was author of several learned 

 works, on subjects relative to which he maintained a correspondence with the 

 most learned men of his time, with whorti he was justly placed among those of 

 the first rank, both for genitis and acquirements. 



Many particulars of his life and writings may be seen more at large, in 

 several books published on biography, &c. 



Extract of a Letter, lately written from Rome, touching the late 

 Comet, and a New one. By Signior John Dominici Cassini.* 

 N" 2, p. 17. 



I cannot enough wonder at the strange agreement of the thoughts of 

 that acute French gentlemen. Monsieur Auzout, in the Hypothesis of 



* John Dominic Cassini, a celebrated astronomer, was born in Piedmont l625, and educated 

 among the Jesuits at Genoa. He had such a turn for Latin poetry, that some of his compositions were 

 printed when he was no more tlian eleven years old. He afterwards devoted himself wholly to mathe- 

 matics, particularly astronomy, and in ]6o() he was appointed professor of mathematics at Bologna. 

 In l6"52 he made an accurate observation of a comet which then appeared; and he determined geome- 

 trically the apogee and eccentricity of a planet, from its true and mean place; a problem which Kepler 



