256 HISTORY OF PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY 



calculation, was resented as an infringement of the 

 rights of property. 



The mode in which these secret methods were 

 invented, was that which we have pointed out; 

 the analysis of a considerable series of observations. 

 Probably the best example of this was afforded by 

 the Liverpool Tide-tables. These were deduced by 

 a clergyman named Holden, from observations made 

 at that port by a harbour-master of the name of 

 Hutchinson ; who was led, by a love of such pur- 

 suits, to observe the tides carefully for above twenty 

 years, day and night. Holden's Tables, founded on 

 four years of these observations, were remarkably 

 accurate. 



At length men of science began to perceive that 

 such calculations were part of their business ; and 

 that they were called upon, as the guardians of the 

 established theory of the universe, to compare it in 

 the greatest possible detail with the facts. Mr. 

 Lubbock was the first mathematician who undertook 

 the extensive labours which such a conviction 

 suggested. Finding that regular tide-observations 

 had been made at the London Docks from 1795, he 

 took nineteen years of these (purposely selecting 

 the length of a cycle of the motions of the lunar 

 orbit,) and caused them (in 1831) to be analyzed by 

 Mr. Dessiou, an expert calculator. He thus ob- 

 tained 40 Tables for the effect of the Moon's De- 

 clination, Parallax, and hour of Transit, on the 

 40 Phil. Trans. 1831. British Almanac, 1R32. 



