572 
Mr. Airy on the 
their northern station, unfortunately was not examined. The 
presumption, I think is, that though a part of the discrepancy 
may be attributed to errors of observation, yet a great part 
of it must be due to the irregularities of local attraction in so 
rugged a country (though Svanberg appears to think this 
impossible), and that the new measure probably is not free 
from errors of the same kind. The measure at the Cape of 
Good Hope, conducted by the ablest astronomer of the 
age, has generally been thought inadmissible for the same 
reason. 
Since U — L = sin 1" x number of seconds in L' — L, we 
have for the length of a meridian arc 
9358 X sin 1" 
16,88164 X 
(sin 2 1 /— 
sin 2 L) -j- 
267 X sin 1" 
16,88164 
16,88164 f j ! ^ 
sin 1" \ 
(sin4L'— sin4L)} o 
Comparing this with the formula in (20), ~ = 
From these equa- 
9358 x sin 1" , 15 e 3 __ 
16,88164 ’ driQ 64 
tions e = ,003589 = 
1 5 A 267 x sin 1" 
32 
1 
278,6 
“ 16,88164 
A = ,000157. The differ- 
ence between the polar and equatorial axes is even greater 
than that assigned by Captain Sabine. But the most striking 
difference in the deductions is that the value of A, now found, 
has a negative sign ; which would seem to indicate that the 
earth is protuberant at the latitude 45 0 above the ellipsoid, 
which has the same axes. And it does not appear that by 
any alteration of the values of A and e it is possible to recon- 
cile the different observations. If we suppose the Indian and 
French arcs to be quite accurate, we shall find e = ,003269 
— A x 2,139: this evidently cannot be reconciled with the 
values of e and A deduced from the pendulum experiments. 
On the whole I conceive, that we cannot assert that, on the 
