Remarks on Inertia. 59 



more passive than that of one pound ! we candidly acknowl- 

 edge that others may draw a different conclusion from the 

 same theory, and that it will be as good as our own, except 

 that it is totally unsupported by facts ; — that as inertia acts 

 in opposition to gravity, the larger the body, the more com- 

 pletely will the power of gravity be resisted. But we have 

 not yet had Mr. B.'s own demonstration of his fundamental 

 proposition ; and we can inform all whom it may concern, that 

 the hundred pound and one pound balls play no unimportant 

 part in it. " If this one hundred pound ball were removed so far 

 from the earth, that its weight should be lessened ninety nine 

 per cent., the impeding quality, inertia, would also be dimin- 

 ished ninety nine per cent. ; and consequently the ball would 

 fall from this point sixteen feet in one second of time. Now let 

 us suppose that while the heavy ball is at this distance from the 

 earth when it weighs only one pound, the attraction of the 

 earth should be increased one hundred fold, the velocity of 

 the ball, which before this augmentation of the attractive force, 

 fell sixteen feet in a second, would not be changed because 

 the impeding quality, inertia, would also be increased : con- 

 sequently the attraction of unequal quantities of matter, on 

 unequal gravitating forces, will cause equal velocities ; and 

 therefore the rate of the fall of bodies pervades the universe." 

 This impeding quality or property, which Mr. B. has imagin- 

 ed, is a very convenient agent. To a person who uses the 

 word inertia in the only proper manner, Mr. B. seems to have 

 advanced some strange assertions : thus, although all matter 

 is perfectly passive on the surface of the earth, by placing a 

 body some forty thousand miles nearer the stars, Mr. B. 

 makes it one hundred times less passive : and then, when it 

 is in one of its most untractable moods, a force, diminished one 

 hundred fold, produces the same effect upon it, as was caus- 

 ed by the whole force, while the body was perfectly passive 

 and most yielding. This is a whimsical hobby which Mr. B. 

 has mounted : and we will e'en leave him and it together ; 

 requesting them, with all respect, to reconcile with the " new 

 theory," the fact, that the versed sine of an arc of the moon's 

 orbit, passed over by that luminary in one minute of time, is 

 no more than about sixteen feet. Z. 



