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of Edinburgh, Session 1873 - 74 . 
nineteen places the logarithms of numbers from 1 to 10,000, and to 
fourteen places of those from 10,000 to 200,000. In the year 1819 
the House of Commons, on the motion of Mr Davies Gilbert, pre- 
sented an address to the Prince Eegent, recommending that our 
Government should join with that of France in the expense of pub- 
lishing these and the accompanying Trigonometrical Tables ; but 
the negotiations fell through, for reasons that have not been made 
public. I have not learned that these computations have been used 
for the verification of those already printed, or that they have served 
for the production of any seven-place table ; and thus, up to the 
present moment, we have no verification of Vlacq’s great work. 
The eminent astronomer Lalande, in publishing his little five- 
place table, was able confidently to assert that it does not contain 
a single error, and although many thousands of copies have been in 
use now for seventy years no fault has been detected. Thus the 
production of a faultless table is quite within the range of pos- 
sibility ; it is a matter of time, of care, of expense ; and with our 
modern appliances the endless reproduction of the plates is easy ; 
so that computers ought to be in possession of tables trustworthy 
throughout, especially of such tables as are of universal application. 
Though not needed for the every-day work of the computer, 
tables of excessive precision are not the less needed in special de- 
partments, and in the preparation of other tables for ordinary use. 
Their extent and the expense of preparing them, coupled with the 
smallness of the number of those by whom they are desired, pre- 
cludes their preparation by private parties, and relegates the 
matter to the care of public authorities. 
In the same way that the “ Nautical Almanac,” which is far 
beyond the reach of private enterprise, and yet is needed for the 
advancement of navigation and astronomy, is undertaken by the 
Government, it would be right to carry out the idea of Davies 
Gilbert, and to confer, by the publication of exact tables, a similar 
boon upon the other branches of science. 
It would be fitting that this should be done by the British 
Government, seeing that the invention and completion of the 
logarithmic method belong to the Island ; and it would be not less 
fitting that the first public body to move in the matter should be 
the Koyal Society of Edinburgh, from whose place of meeting 
