437 
of a Light seen in the dark Part of the Moon. 
out to me the place of the sky where he had seen the moon, 
with respect to the opposite house and chimnies over which 
she appeared. With the help of a pocket compass and 
small wooden quadrant, I found the bearing of the place 
of the sky, which he pointed out to me, to be 8o° west of 
the magnetic south, or 56° west of the true south meridian, 
and the altitude 34 0 . Taking the moon's right ascension 
from the nautical almanac for the 7th of March, the day 
stated by Mr. Wilkins, with the bearing abovementioned, 
and latitude of St. John's Square taken 51 0 31', I find the 
observation must have been made exactly at eight o'clock 
mean time, provided the bearing could be exactly depended 
upon ; but as an uncertainty of a few degrees may be allowed 
therein, we may conclude that the observation was not far 
from eight o'clock. This agrees nearly with the time of Mr. 
Wilkins's observation, for he seems to have lost sight of the 
star on the dark part of the moon a little before eight o'clock, 
mean time, at Norwich, the correspondent time to which in 
St. John's Square, on account of the difference of meridians, 
would be five minutes sooner. An error only of ten minutes 
in the time noted by Mr. Wilkins, and that deduced from 
the bearing observed in St. John's Square, both taken together, 
will bring the observation in St. John's Square to precede the 
time of the disappearance of the star-like appearance at Nor- 
wich : and therefore the two observations agree as nearly to- 
gether as can be expected from the circumstances in which 
the observers were placed, and the two observations mutually 
confirm each other. The altitude of the moon at eight o’clock, 
by computation, is 41 0 , or 7 0 higher than that taken with the 
quadrant ; which difference may be allowed for the error such 
