A Letter on Otaheite. 283 



hope that such a theory will yet be developed. The views which I 

 have given, if correct, are valuable as auxiliary to the attainment of 

 that object; for if it is ever attained, it will doubtless be done by a 

 correct mathematical appreciation of each of the several sources of 

 resistance separately. 



In the foregoing remarks, I have endeavored to give a prominence 

 to the distinctions I have made, between the different aspects in 

 which mechanical agency may be contemplated, corresponding to 

 my views of their importance. That the quantities between which 

 I have endeavored to distinguish, are different, is no new discovery. 

 Their difference has always been recognized, whenever it has been 

 adverted to. It has, however, been so little adverted to, at least in 

 treatises of mechanics, that it is scarcely too much to say, that it has 

 been wholly overlooked. Nothing is more common, not only in 

 loose conversation and writing, but even in the books which profess 

 to teuch on this subject, than to find these several quantities spoken 

 of under one and the same name, without any discrimination at all, 

 and evidently without any apprehension of their difference. It is to 

 this circumstance, as I have already suggested, that I chiefly attribute 

 the well known fact that, in reference to the application and use of 

 mechanical power, theory and practice have hitherto wooed each oth- 

 er almost in vain. Whenever a good treatise of mechanics shall be 

 given to the public, in which these distinctions are laid down in lim- 

 ine as fundamental, and carried out through all branches of the sub- 

 ject, as I have endeavored to carry them out here, that moment, in 

 my view, theory and practice on this subject, will be wedded, and a 

 new era in their history will commence. 



Art. XV. — A Letter on Otaheite; addressed to B. L. Oliver, 

 Esq. of Boston, and by him translated. 



Communicated for insertion in this Journal. 



TO B. L. OLIVER, ESa. 



gir^ — Agreeably to your request, I proceed to give you a short 

 account of the traditions among the native inhabitants of the Islands 

 in the Pacific Ocean, relative to their religion and their ancient con- 

 dition. The traditions, I have collected during a residence at Ota- 

 heite of six or seven years, within which time, I have also visited 



