VOL. LVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL T11AN8ACTION9. 411 



their discovery be looked on as very considerable; and will it not in some measure 

 account for their not having proceeded any farther than the east side of the bay 

 of Siam ? 



On the whole, as nothing was exported from this kingdom of the Sinae but 

 what the city of Cambodia excelled in ; and as the ancient and modern situations 

 of these cities appear to be reciprocal; above all, as we have the testimony of 

 the Periplus Maris Erythraei, that it lay somewhere in the bay of Siam, and the 

 express declaration of two others, that it was situated on the east side of the bay ; 

 joined to the unanimous consent of all the geographers, that the country to the 

 east and south was unknown, it may reasonably be inferred, that their ultima 

 were on this coast; and the metropolis Sina or Thina the same as the modem 

 city of Cambodia. 



VIII. A Computation of the Distance of the Sun from the Earth. By S. Hors- 

 ley,* LL.B., Rector of St. Mary, Newington, in Surry, F.R.S. p. L79- 



I offer the following computation, rather as a verification than an amendment 

 of Dr. Stewart's. The method, in which I have pursued, is different from what 



* This Tery able mathematician and learned prelate was born in October 1732, and he died Oct. 

 A, 1806, consequently about 7-1 years of age. He received the elements of his education at West- 

 minster-school, whence he was removed to the university of Cambridge. There he chiefly applied 

 to the study of mathematics ; and not content with carefully consulting the writings of the acutest 

 of the moderns, he recurred to the profoundest of the ancients in that line, and made himself master 

 of their most intricate reasonings. Having taken his degree as master of arts, he accepted an invi- 

 tation to accompany the present Earl of Aylesford, as private tutor, to Oxford. Here, in 1769, 

 Dr. H. printed his edition of the Geometrical Inclinations of Apollonius, and here he first conceived 

 the design of publishing a complete edition of the works of Sir Isaac Newton, for which he began 

 to prepare the materials. And from this time it hag been more the fashion to cultivate the mathe- 

 matical sciences at that university. On leaving this place Dr. H. came to London, where be wa» 

 elected f.r.s., and enriched the Phil. Trans, with many valuable essays, from vol. Ivii. to vol. 

 Ixvi. He was also chosen one of the secretaries in 1773, on the resignation of Dr. Morton ; an 

 oflice he continued to serve, with the greatest credit to himself and benefit to science, till he thought 

 it proper to resign along with the late president Sir John Pringle, in 1778. Soon after settling in 

 the metropolis. Dr. H. was noticed by Bishop Louth, and was appointed his lordship's domestic 

 chaplain, as well as was presented by that prelate successively to several different livings. In 1776, 

 Dr. H. published proposals for a complete edition of the works of the immortal Newton, with notes, 

 which appeared in 1779^ in 5 vols. 4to, with an elegant Latin dedication to the king. In 1?78 he 

 preached and published a sermon against the principles of materialism, agitated between the doctors 

 Price and Priestley, &c. ; and on the publication, in 1783, of Dr. Priestley's History of the Cor- 

 ruptions of Christianity, Dr. H. again attacked the positions and principles of that writer and his 

 adherents, with great applause and success, after the exchange of several pamphlets, &c. on both 

 rides; which chiefly laid the foundation of Dr. H.'s elevation to the episcopal dignity in 1788, as- 

 sisted probably by the very celebrated speeches he made in the course of the violent debates that took 

 place in the Royal Society 2 or 3 years before, on occasion of the removal of Dr. Hutton from the 

 office of foreign secretary, when Dr- Horsley, and several other members, forsook, as expressed in 

 hii own forcible language, " that temple, where Philosophy once reigned, and where Newton pre- 



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