2 86 
Dr. Charles Hutton on 
the more judicious reader to place confidence in them, except 
chiefly on account of the high character of the experimenter 
himself. From the nature of the machinery, I could there- 
fore derive no confidence in the results, nor compare them 
with the mountain experiment, without repeating the whole 
of the calculations. But, after a long life spent in almost 
daily abstruse investigations, from the tenth year of my age, 
and now being at eighty-four, and oppressed with distressing 
illness, I thought I might be excused from such a task. But, 
after urging more than one mathematical friend, without 
being able to interest them sufficiently to engage in so severe 
an operation, my anxiety to accomplish the business induced 
me to make an exertion to effect it myself; especially as the 
learned experimenter informs us, that he availed himself of 
the assistance of the then clerk of the Society, who he says 
made some of the experiments, and who doubtless made 
most of the arithmetical computations : operations, of both 
kinds, in which I remember he was much employed by Sir 
Charles Blagden, and other gentlemen, in preparing their 
papers for the Royal Society. I have therefore recomputed 
all the experiments, and have traced the investigations of 
all the theorems ; and have found that my labour has not 
been in vain ; but, on the contrary, has been rewarded with 
the following copious list of errata, some of which are large 
or important. 
In the following instances it is to be noted, that the refer- 
ences are made to Mr. Cavendish's paper, as printed in my 
edition of the Philosophical Transactions, as I am not now 
possessed of a set of the original edition ; but with which, 
however, I have had my own set compared and Verified. 
