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Let me obferve alfo, that the 9 foot fedtor, made 
in London by Mr. Graham, with which the gentle- 
men of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris 
meafured a degree of the meridian, at the polar 
circle, and afterwards a degree between Paris and 
Amiens, had, at the time of their making thole ob- 
fervations with it, the fufpenfion of the plumb-line 
contrived after the fame manner as mine (whatever 
alterations may have fince been made in it) as ap- 
pears from M. De Maupertuis’s minute and accurate 
defcription of the faid inftrument, in his account of 
the meafure of the degree of the meridian between 
Paris and Amiens : for he there fays, that the part of 
the central pin, on which the loop of the plumb- 
line was hung, refembled the meeting of two oppo- 
fite cones at their points j which is an exadt defcrip- 
tion of the form of the neck of the central pin of 
my fe&or. But, though this capital defedt in the 
fufpenfion of the plumb-line of my inftrument 
(which I could not corredf, at St. Helena, for want 
of workmen and tools) prevented me from deciding 
the queftion concerning the annual parallax of Sirius ; 
yet, as 1 am confcious, the want of fuccefs did not 
arife from any fault of mine, I (hall endeavour to 
confole myfelf for my difappointment, by the reflexion, 
that I may, at ieaft, have contributed fomething to 
the benefit of aftronomy, by having difcovered, by 
my experiments, the imperfedtion of the above- 
mentioned method of fufpenfion of the plumb-line 
in fedtors, which no one ever fufpedted before, and 
fo may be the means of preventing any more in- 
ftruments of this kind being conftrudted in the like 
faulty 
