5IDERIAJL CLOCK, 
VI X, 
Letter from a Correspondent respecting an Error in Mr. JFdod « 
house’s Elementary Treatise on Astronomy . 
To Mr. Nicholson , 
March 24th, 1813a 
SIR, 
T HE Elementary Treatise on Astronomy published last year 
by Mr. Woodhouse, of Cams College, in the University 
of Cambridge, is, I make no doubt, in the hands of most oi 
your astronomical readers : permit me to offer, through the 
medium of your Journal, a few observations on the method the 
learned author has there adopted for adjusting a siderial clock 
to 0 h . O' G'.J 
Having determined, by means of the differential series, 
y=a-f-dx-r-d°'x*(x— i ) -f , &c. the time when the sun entered 
/ 2 
the equator, which in the example selected, is March 20th, 18 h „ 
ll ; . 23 /7 . for meridian of Cambridge ; he concludes, that at 
that time the first point of aries was on the meridian. Now, 
Sir, if the first point of aries was on the meridian ^ it is manifest 
that the sun, which is on the 1st point of aries, is also on the 
meridian, that is to say, at 18 h . 11 ; . 23 ;/ . mean solar time, a 
phenomenon which I believe no astronomer has ever yet wit- 
nessed. The error into which the learned and ingenious 
author has fallen, might possibly perplex some of the younger 
persons for whom the treatise is destined, and therefore I have 
chosen to point it out through the medium of your valuable 
publication. 
lam, Sir, 
Your constant reader, 
D. T. 
N 
Vol. XXXV,— No. m. 
Observations 
