Miscellanies. 223 



sity might render the discharge of his duties less satisfactory to himself than he 

 could wish. Those who knew him best, however, often remarked upon his extra- 

 ordinary power of communicating instruction in the clearest manner ; and Chief 

 Justice Parsons, as competent a judge in the case as could be found in any country, 

 has said to the writer of this notice, that of all the men he had known, he had 

 never found one who could make any mathematical proposition so transparently 

 clear and intelligible by mere oral statement, without a diagram or figures, as Dr. 

 Bowditch. It may also here be added, that Dr. B. had the highest respect for 

 the great mathematical attainments of Chief Justice Parsons; and it may be 

 interesting to many persons to know, that under the Rules for Lunar Observations 

 in the " Practical Navigator," Dr. B. has introduced an improved method of cor- 

 recting the apparent distance of the moon from the sun or a star, which was sug- 

 gested by that great man, whom he justly characterizes as " eminently distinguished 

 for his mathematical acquirements."* 



It should have been before stated, that after quitting the life of a navigator. Dr. 

 B. held the office of president of a marine insurance company in his native town 

 for several years ; until, upon the establishment of that well known and invaluable 

 institution, the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company, in Boston, his tal- 

 ents were deemed indispensable in its organization and management ; and he was 

 invited to take charge of it, under the title of its Actuary. The great exactness of 

 calculation and the order and precision introduced by him into that institution, will 

 long attest the comprehensiveness of his views and his facility in the practical man- 

 agement of its affairs. 



On the occasion of leaving his native town to enter upon his new office, his 

 townsmen spontaneously united in a public dinner, as a testimonial of their re- 

 spect and grateful recollection of his eminent services to his country and of his 

 great private worth. 



While he resided in Salem he undertook his well known translation of La Place's 

 Micanique C6leste, accompanied with his invaluable Commentary upon it. This 

 truly gigantic task was begun in the year 1815, and has been the steady occupation 

 of his leisure hours to the time of his death. His elucidations and commentaries, 

 while they show him to have been as thoroughly master of that mighty subject as 

 La Place himself, will make that great work — the most profound of modern times 

 — accessible to innumerable students, who without such aid would be compelled 

 to forego the use of it. 



The labor of translating and commenting on the whole of that work had defied 

 the zeal and industry.of the scientific men of Great Britain ; and one of their lead' 

 ing journals gives due credit to America for this extraordinary and honorable 

 achievement in the cause of Science, which had not been accomplished by any in- 

 dividual among the numerous scientific associations of Great Britain. 



" The idea," says the journal alluded to, " of undertaking a translation of the 

 whole Mdcanique Celeste, accompanied throughout with a copious running com- 

 mentary, is one which savors, at first sight, of the gigantesque ; and is certainly 

 one which, from what we have hitherto had reason to conceive of the popularity 

 and diffusion of mathematical knowledge on the opposite shores of the Atlantic, 

 we should never have expected to have found originated — or, at least, carried into 

 execution in that quarter. The part actually completed [the first volume,] is, with 

 few and slight exceptions, just what we could have wished to see — an exact and 

 careful translation into very good English — exceedingly well printed, and accom- 

 panied with Notes appended to each page ; which leave no step in the text, of mo- 



* Bowditch's Navigator, p. 161, edit. 1811. 



