Mr. T. S. Davies on Geometry and Geometers. 201 



two sets of aspiring parties quarreled " over a bone " some 

 eighty years ago, that men who cultivate two very difficult 

 and ever-expanding sciences, should now look upon each other 

 with jealousy, because those two factions assumed the names 

 of these two sciences as the symbols of their factions. Even 

 as regards the suppression or publication of papers in the 

 Philosophical Transactions, it will be more frequently found 

 that any impropriety has arisen from the influence of persons 

 pursuing the same science than the opposite one — at any rate 

 the alleged impropriety. 



Another writer proposes to Nourse to take a work on his 

 own hands, under the title of Syntagma Analyseos ; or a New 

 Introduction to the Mathematics. After a laudatory account 

 of himself, he gives the contents, and concludes with the fol- 

 io v/ing: — 



"As I often write to the Diaries, Magazines &c. under various 

 fictitious appellations, I may thereby forward its sale by recommend- 

 ing or quoting it." 



The method of indirect puffing was not unknown even 

 then ! Till I met with this letter, however, I had taken the 

 name of the writer (Malachy Hitchins, Exeter College, Ox- 

 ford) to be itself fictitious. His contributions (at least under 

 his own name) are respectable for the time, though none of 

 them bespeak powers far above mediocrity. I do not think 

 that Nourse was taken with the bait of his " recommending " 

 his own book ; and indeed I have no knowledge of its having 

 been published at all. 



The following passage is only curious as showing a mathe- 

 matician's notions of amusement. It is from a printed pro- 

 posal to publish by subscription a " Complete Course of Ma- 

 thematics " in 96 sixpenny numbers ; the scheme of which 

 was abandoned, and the MS. offered to Nourse, who also ap- 

 pears to have declined it. 



" Even to those who peruse books for amusement, the author 

 ventures to recommend this work, presuming that more real enter- 

 tainment, much more genuine satisfaction must flow from it, than 

 can arise from an insignificant romance or fictitious tale, which serve 

 chiefly to vitiate the taste and corrupt the morals." 



This is dated Newcastle 1770, and the author is John Da- 

 vidson — a mathematician of great local note, and of some ge- 

 neral reputation in those days. 



