MEMOIR OF SIR THOMAS MAKDOUGALL BRISBANE. 597 
found to be more correct than the captain of the sloop-of-war, who had only 
stood out from the land the previous night; indeed, he could not have been a 
mnile out of his reckoning.” 
On Napoleon’s escape from Elba in 1815, the brigade which Sir THomas com- 
manded was recalled, and he arrived off the coast of France with twelve regi- 
ments of the line just as Waterloo was won. On landing at Portsmouth, he 
received orders to put himself and his army under the command of the Duke of 
Wellington, and he joined his Grace at Paris. When he arrived, Wellington 
directed him to draw up his brigade in two lines of 5000 men each; and his 
Grace on looking down the lines, exclaimed, “‘ Had I had these men at Waterloo, 
I should not have wanted the assistance of Prussians.”’ 
In 1816, Sir THomas was elected corresponding member. of the Institute of 
France, in a manner worthy of the Institute and himself. It was reported to him 
that a detachment of the Allies were threatening the observatory and the buildings 
of the Institute; he at once ordered them to desist and sent them to quarters. 
At the next meeting of the Institute, Atexis Bouvarp, the celebrated astro- 
nomer, proposed that Sir Taomas’s name should be added to their roll; and although 
five others were candidates for this distinguished honour, their names were with- 
_ drawn, and he was unanimously elected. 
In the following year, His Majesty conferred on him, through the Duke of 
Wellington, the title of Knight of the Cross of Hanover. 
While in France with the Army of Occupation, though at leisure he was not 
idle, for he busied himself in calculating tables for the reduction of English 
weights and measures to those of France, and vice versa. He also computed tables 
for determining the apparent time from altitudes of the sun and stars. So im- 
portant were these tables in the estimation of the Duke of Wellington, that he 
had them printed at the head-quarters of the army. This work is perhaps unique 
in being printed at and published by the press of an army. It is marked as 
having been printed by Sergeant Bucnan of the 3d Foot Guards, at the head- 
quarters of the army in France in 1818. This work is also interesting, as con- 
taining a series of tables calculated by our late President, for the purpose of 
simplifying the determination of the time with accuracy, from observations of 
altitudes of the sun taken on the same side of the meridian. Although Sir 
Tuomas joined this Society in 1811, this was the first paper he contributed to 
our records, and it was an important one. It was read on the 2d February 
1818, and was published in the 8th volume of the Transactions. 
For the determination of the time by the sextant, it was usual to make a 
double set of observations of equal altitudes, before and after meridian. This 
method was liable to the objection—in our climate a serious one—that it was 
rarely possible to obtain observations free from clouds at equal intervals, before and 
after noon; and also, that the coefficient for refraction, caused by differences of 
VOL. XXII. PART III. TP 
