324 Don J. Rodriguez’s Observations on the 
A commission, composed of some of the most distinguished 
members of the Academy of Sciences, was charged to form 
the plan of these operations, which were to serve as the basis 
of the new system. They invented new instruments, new 
methods, new formulae, and in short almost the whole of this 
important undertaking consisted of something new in science. 
Two celebrated astronomers, Delambre and MECHAiN,were 
engaged to perforin the astronomical and geodetical observa- 
tions, and these they continued as far as Barcelona in Spain. 
The details of their operations, observations, and calculations, 
were subsequently examined by a committee of men of science, 
many of whom were foreigners collected at Paris, who con- 
firmed their results, and by the sanction of such an union of 
talents, gave such a degree of credit and authenticity to their 
conclusions as could scarcely be acquired by other means. 
Since that time, in the year 1806, Messrs. Biot and Arago, 
members of the National Institute, were sent into Spain for 
the express purpose of carrying on the same course of opera- 
tions still further southward, from Barcelona as far as For- 
mentera, the southernmost of the Balearic islands. Fortunately 
this last undertaking, which forms a most satisfactory sup- 
plement to the former, was completed by the month of May, 
1808, at a period when political circumstances w'ould not ad- 
mit of any further operations being pursued, as a means of 
verifying the results, by measuring a base which should be 
independent of those formerly obtained in France. 
In the year 1801, the Swedish Academy of Sciences, encou- 
raged by the success of the operations conducted in France, 
sent also three of its members into Lapland, to verify their 
former measurement taken in 1736, by new methods, and by 
