322 Davis’s Report on the Nautical Almanac. 
A list of the computers and other persons employed in the 
office of the Nautical Almanac is hereunto annexed, and alsoa 
statement of the number of persons, except the superintendent, 
who have been paid for services in preparing the Nautical Alma- 
nac, and the compensation they have received up to the last 
payment. 
8. When is it expected that a Nautical Almanac will be pre- 
pared for publication ? 
The reply to No. 8 is contained in that to No. 4. It is expected 
that the first volume will be ready for sale and distribution in 
about three or four months. 
9. What improvement, if any, is it expected the American Nau- 
tical Almanac, when published, will have over the English? 
The American Nautical Almanac has made improvements upon 
the English in the ephemeris of the moon, and that of most of 
the planets. It has rejected the lunar tables of Burckhardt and 
Damoiseau, now pronounced obsolete, and has constructed lunar 
tables for its own use, which embrace the corrections of Profes- 
sor Airy deduced from the lunar observations made at the royal 
observatory of Greenwich, from 1750 to 1830, and the correc- 
tions arising from the discovery of Hansen. It is only necessary 
of a ship’s longitude at sea. 
The lunar tables prepared in the office of the Nautical Alma- 
nac, reduce the average errors in the moon’s place as derived from 
the obsolete tables and given in the British Astronomical Ephem- 
eris to one-third of their amount, and a distinguished gentleman 
of Philadelphia, Mr. Miers Fisher Longstreth, has since publish 
an improvement of the lunar formula, which has probably ag 
duced this remaining error by two-thirds; Mr. Longstreth’s cor 
rections have been embodied in the new tables of the almanac, 
and thus, owing to the genius and labors of Peirce, Longstret, 
and other distinguished astronomers, the almanac has it now 17 
its power to predict the moon’s place in the heavens with a ee 
gree of precision far surpassing anything heretofore attained else- 
