rot. XI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 36l 



given in the first vol. of our Abridgement. Like his father he arrived at great 

 honours, being appointed a counsellor of state, &c. 



IV. Longitude found by Henry Bond,* Senior, Teacher of the Mathematics. 

 London, 1676, in 4to. 



The attempt and pains of the author of this book are certainly very com- 

 mendable, as he endeavours to explain the use of the inclinatory needle, and in 

 so doing makes it known to the world that, as both the variation and inclina- 

 tion of the needle were found out first of all in this nation by two Englishmen, 

 Mr. Robert Norman and Mr. William Burrows; he has now made it his busi- 

 ness to apply it to a use, formerly, for ought we know, not thought of, viz. 

 to find the longitude. 



Meantime, the editor is desired here to take notice of a mistake committed 

 in this book, viz. in the page printed next after the epistle to the reader, where 

 it is said, that this treatise has been examined by six commissioners appointed 

 by the king, and the truth of it affirmed to his majesty; whereas of the six per- 

 sons there named, the Right Hon. the Lord Viscount Brouncker, chancellor to 

 her Majesty, P.R.S. declares that he never so much as saw this treatise before 

 it was printed, nor was ever present at any of the meetings of the other com- 

 missioners ; the quality of the report of whom concerning this matter, the rea- 

 der will doubtless be acquainted with in due time. 



V. The Royal Almanack. By N. Stephenson, one of his Majesty's Gunners. 

 London, 1677, in 12mo. 



This almanack is a very useful diary of the true places of the sun, moon, and 

 other planets; their rising, southing, and setting; as also of high water at 

 London-bridge, with rules to serve other places after the new theory of tides, 

 and directions of Sir Jonas Moore. To which are added the eclipses, with a 

 table of equations for the regulating curious pendulum clocks and movements, 

 to the sun: likewise a table of the sun's right ascension in time for every day 

 at noon, and of thirty of the most notable fixed stars; together with the moon's 

 and the other planets' appulses to the fixed stars, for the meridian of London, 

 in the year J677 ; as also a transit of Mercury under the sun, calculated for 



* Mr. Heruy Bond was an intelligent mathematician and teacher of navigation, whose table of 

 the variation of the magnetic needle was published in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 40, p. -^82, 

 vol. i. of this Abridgement. Sir Charles Cavendish, in an original letter of his from Antwerp, Nov. 

 13, l648, to Mr. John Pell, then professor of mathematics at Breda, mentions Mr. Bond as " an 

 old mathematician at London, who speaks very meanly of himself, and yet he found an easy and 

 short demonstration of that proposition concerning spherical triangles, which Mr. Oughtred demon- 

 strated first, who told me Mr. Bond's demonstration was shorter." 



VOL. II. 3 A 



