Benjamin Peirce. 173 
in some degree have been due to the excessive brevity of the 
argument by which Professor Peirce established the equations 
to be used. Perhaps no one has read that argument for the 
first time without finding difficulty in understanding some parts 
of the reasoning. A want of confidence may thus have easily 
resulted. Professor Chauvenet has given us a simpler rule for 
use in rejecting a single divergent observation; but it is only 
an approximate solution, since one important element is left 
out of account. Computers need some such rule to guide t ‘em, 
and it would seem almost certain that “ Peirce’s Criterion,” or 
a satisfactory, solution of this delicate and practically important 
problem of probability. At present it is the only solution we 
believe that claims to be com 
After the death of Professor Bache, Professor Peirce was, in 
years. Soon after his appointment he made a tour of inspection 
among the parties at work in the field. Notwithstanding his 
previous intimate relations with sia survey as adviser to Profes- 
sor Bac was very much surprised and delighted with the 
practical skill which many of the officers had acquired. “TI 
recognize at once,” he “the masters of the profession.” 
im n great concern. Yet he determined to hold to the broad- 
est line of policy, and introduce no rigid discipline that might 
damp the ardor and spontaneity of the faithful. “The lame 
and the lazy are always provided for,” says the adage; and in 
the public service they are found, practically, to have the most 
friends from without, because needing them most. In a scien- 
tific service like the Coast Survey, which, unlike many of the — 
departments of the civil service, furnishes absolute criteria from 
which to judge the merits of an officer, the task of discrimina- 
tion, if undertaken by a superintendent ‘well versed in the matb- 
ematics ab hees underlying the manceuvres of the surveyor, 
would seem to be as easy as it is just. But it was a saying of 
Piuhseiot Bache, that “it would be easy enough to crush directly 
the men who betrayed the good repute of the service if it was 
not for uncles, aunts, and cousins, who proposed, in their turn, 
to “vinted him 
Tt was after his return from one of his earliest ie of in- 
spection that Professor Peirce, in conversation with one of the 
older assistants, said he proposed to give, at least at she outset, 
greater freedom of action to the officers of the corps, that each 
