the Bramin’s Obfervatory at Benares. 601 
direction of an European mechanic ; but arts appear to 
have declined equally with fcience in the Eaft. 
Lieutenant-colonel Archibald Campbell, at that 
time chief engineer in the Eaft India Company’s fervice 
at Bengal, a gentleman whofe abilities do honour to his 
profeflion, made a perfpedtive drawing of the whole of 
the apparatus that could be brought within his eye at 
one view ; but I lament he could not reprefent fome very 
large quadrants, whofe radii were about twenty feet, 
they being on the fide from whence he took his 
drawing. Their defcription however is, that they 
are exadt quarters of circles of different radii, the 
largeft of which I judged to be twenty feet, conftructed 
very exadtly on the fides of ftone walls built perpendi- 
cular, and fituated, I fuppofe, in the meridian of the 
place: a brafs pin is fixed at the center or angle of 
the quadrant, from whence, the Bramin informed me, 
they ftretched a wire to the circumference when an ob- 
fervation was to be made; from which it occurred to 
me, the obferver muft have moved his eye up or down 
the circumference, by means of a ladder or fome fuch 
contrivance, to raife and lower himfelf, until he had dif- 
covered the altitude of any of the heavenly bodies in 
their paffage over the meridian, fo exprefled on the arcs of 
thefe quadrants : thefe arcs were very exadtly divided into 
Vol. LXVII. 4 I 
nine 
