NAVIGATION. 95 



word about latitude before leaving Sumner's 

 method, the beauty of which, according to Captain 

 Croudace of Dundee, a very intelligent advocate 

 of it, 1 " consists in its glorious disregard of the true 

 latitude." You see that, in describing it, I have 

 never once used the word latitude ; but now what 

 I have to say is this : If the altitude is taken 

 when the sun is exactly in the meridian, the 

 Sumner circle touches the circle of latitude in 

 which the ship is at the time, and therefore the 

 information which in this case we derive from 

 Sumner's method, is simply the ship's latitude. 

 Thus we see that the old well known and universal 

 way of finding a ship's latitude is only a particular 

 application of Sumner's method. But there is 

 this peculiarity of the noon observation : you do 

 not need to take time from a chronometer 

 when making it ; all you have to do is to find 

 the greatest altitude attained by the sun just 

 before he begins to dip. Should he be clouded 

 over at the critical moment when he is highest 



1 Star Fontm/at y for Finding Latitude and Longitude by Sumner's 

 Method, p. 4, Preface. By W. S. Croudace. 



