of Edinburgh, Session 1874 - 75 . 
435 
of all civilised nations, to the obliteration, in most of them, of every 
trace of any other system ; 260 years ago, it was crowned by the 
invention of logarithms, which invention has rendered its exclusive 
use in every department of science only a question of time. Briggs 
computed a trigonometric table to each hundredth part of the 
degree ; and near the end of the last century the still further im- 
provement was proposed of dividing the quadrant itself into one 
hundred degrees, and each degree centesimally. Borda, about 1793, 
computed, to each minute of this division, a table, which was given 
in a compressed and inconvenient form by Callet, in his “ Tables Por- 
tatives but an extension of this, at least so far as to each tenth 
second, was absolutely needed before the centesimal division could 
be used in the higher departments of geodesy and astronomy. 
The French government, with a most enlightened regard for the 
interests of science, that is, for the interests of humanity, ordered 
the computation to be proceeded with, and entrusted the execution 
thereof to M. Prony. In confident expectation of the speedy 
appearance of this table, M. de La Place gave in his great treatise 
on Astronomy, the “ Mecanique Celeste,” the data and formulae, 
according to the new division of the circle. The calculations have 
been finished, but have remained in the libraries of the Institute, 
and of the Observatory, inaccessible and useless to the general 
scientific public. 
It would be difficult indeed to over-estimate the injury done to 
the progress of exact science by this calculation and this occlusion, 
accompanied, as they have been, by the pretence of exhaustive 
accuracy and unrivalled extent. There was enough of enterprise, 
enough of zeal, to have long ago completed the necessary work to 
seven places. Michael Taylor, in 1792, had finished a far more 
extensive work, the compilation of a seven-place table to each single 
second of the old division. But these existent and unpublished 
tables barred the way ; for no private person would think of under- 
taking of new a work which had been already so well accomplished. 
Thus the most excellent and most laudable design of the French 
Government has been frustrated, — has been turned from a benefit 
to an injury. 
Though sorely needed and urgently demanded, the new tables 
did not appear ; and when expectation had been stretched to the 
