﻿ACROSS THE PENINSULA OF INDIA. 319 



Gen. Roy, relative to his ineasuiements on Hoims^ 

 low-heatli and Rumneii-marsh, with his continuations 

 of triangles ; — and the later accounts of a trigono- 

 metrical survey along the southern and eastern coasts 

 of Englandy i3y Lieut. Col. Williams, Caw, 

 MuDGE, and Mr. Dalby, are works which I con- 

 sider as a treasure. 



With respect to the plan of my operations, had 

 I been possessed of an instrument, Avhich I could 

 have tliought sufficiently accurate for taking hori- 

 zontal angles, I should have measured a base some- 

 where near the eastern coast, both on account of its 

 being a more regular country, and nearer the level of 

 the sea, to which all future measurements and dis- 

 tances must be reduced, and because I could have 

 computed my longitude from the Madras observa- 

 tory. There would have been, besides, some proba- 

 bility of getting a measurement in the meridian, or 

 so near it, that all oblique directions mi2,-ht have been 

 accurately reduced to it, and that would be a means 

 of at once obtaining the length of a degree on the 

 meridian : and as a degree has never, yet been mea- 

 sured in this parallel, it is no trifling circumstance to 

 look forward to, because, we shoultl get a datum iu 

 the first ijistance, for computing the ratio of the 

 earth's diameters, considering it to be an ellipsoid. 

 And as I have the same kind of chain, made by the 

 same incomparable artist. Air. Rams den, as that 

 with which Colonel Williams and Captain 

 MuDGE measured their bases; from a comparison 

 between two measurements made in parallels so distant 

 from each other, with instruments of the same kind, 

 and reduced to the same standard temperature; theie 

 is some reason to hope that computations made from 

 such measurements n)ay come nearer the truth than 

 any other, 



liowi VEU, this is an object to which I look for- 

 ward v.licn those instruments arrive, Mhich govern- 

 ment 



