222 Miscellanies. 



tor himself for a few years, principally, if not exclusively, in East India voyages, 

 which gave him the most favorable opportunities of rendering his mathematical stu- 

 dies practically useful to the nautical interests of his country. 



At that period, the common treatise on navigation was the well known work of 

 Hamilton Moore, which has occasioned many a shipwreck, but which Dr. Bow- 

 ditch, like other navigators, was obliged to use. Upon examining it, however, in 

 his daily operations, he found it abounding with blunders and overrun with typo- 

 graphical errors, particularly in the Nautical Tables, in which, above all parts of the 

 work, great accuracy was indispensable ; of these last errors, many thousands, of 

 more or less importance, were corrected in his early revisions of the work. He 

 published several editions of Moore's work under that author's name; but the 

 whole fabric at length underwent so many changes and radical improvements by 

 the addition of new, and the rejection of old and worthless matter, as to warrant 

 his publishing it under his own name ; and the work of Moore is now only remem- 

 bered from its having been superseded by " Bowditch's Navigator." 



It may be added, that he was enabled to give the greater accuracy to his work by 

 means of a collection of manuscript Journals of his seafaring townsmen, preserved 

 in the valuable East India Society's Museum, in Salem. By a rule of that associ- 

 ation — which is believed to hate been proposed by Dr. Bowditch — each member 

 was required to carry with him on every voyage, a blank book, methodically ar- 

 ranged, for the porpose of keeping a journal of observations and remarkable occur- 

 rences; these journals (now amounting to many volumes) at the end of the voyage 

 were returned to the Museum ; and they form arepository of innumerable observa- 

 tions in nautical and geographical science not to be found in any other sources. 



In connection with this part of the subject, it should be further observed, that 

 Dr. Bowditch also employed himself during several seasons (1805, '6, '7,) in ma- 

 king an elaborate hydrographical survey of the harbor of Salem, with the adjacent 

 harbors of Marblehead, Beverly, and Manchester; of which he published an admi- 

 rable chart of surpassing beauty and accuracy. With such extraordinary exactness 

 was this laborious work performed, that the pilots of the port discovered, and were 

 the first to observe to the author, that many of their landmarks — which, however, 

 Dr. B. did not know to be such — were in fact laid down with such perfect accu- 

 racy in the survey, that the various ranges on the chart corresponded with the ut- 

 most possible precision to those of the natural objects. 



The ardor and perseverance which distinguished Dr. B. through life, were very 

 early conspicuous in the prosecution of his mathematical and philosophical studies. 

 While his pecuniary means were very limited, he used to make copious abstracts of 

 the scientific papers in that immense repository, the Philosophical Transactions of 

 the Royal Society of London : this labor was continued through many years ; and 

 the numerous large volumes of these manuscript abstracts in his library, embracing 

 a great portion of that whole work, still remain the testimonials of his untiring in- 

 dustry and zeal in the cause of science. 



During a large part of his life he was a principal contributor to the Memoirs of the 

 American Academy ; and it is unnecessary to add, that his communications are 

 among the most important in that work. He is also the author of a few reviews in 

 the leading journals of the time." 



In the year 1806, at the particular instance, as it was said, of the late Chief Jus- 

 tice Parsons — whose extraordinary attainments included a knowledge of the higher 

 branches of mathematics — Dr. Bowditch was elected Professor of Mathematics and 

 Natural Philosophy in the University of Cambridge. He could not, however, be 

 persuaded to accept the office; principally, it is believed, if not wholly, from an 

 apprehension that the circumstance of his not having been educated at that univer- 



* In the Monthly Anthology and North American Review. 



