Mr. Maskelyne next tells us of an irregularity which he says happened in cold Weather, and says, 'However, it seems in general that the Frost must have been the cause of these irregularities, as well as of the Watch's going so much slower in the month of January, than it had gone before.' Mr. Maskelyne ought along with this, to have published what I told Him when I explained it; that the provision against the effects of heat and cold was not
sideration that his Majesty wished well to the Invention. On the contrary, the Astronomer Royal has left it to be inferred from his overt acts, that he was much worse than indifferent to the success of the result.—About twenty years after, Mr. Mudge, who had two Timekeepers on trial for the rewards under the 14th George 3rd, complained that they were carried backwards and forwards every day across an open court intersected by some steps, on account of its unequal level; justly thinking that if the bearer accelerated his pace in bad weather, he might, without intending it, give the Watch a motion in the plane of the balance prejudicial to its accuracy. Whether this arose from the Doctor's apathy towards the success of the Machines, or from his deficiency in mechanical knowledge, we cannot say, but that there was something disingenuous in his conduct, is rendered suspicious by the very singular perversion of a common word. In adverting to the situation of the great room at Flamstead Hill where the Timekeepers were kept, and that of the transit room, where they were compared with the Clock, he says the former was one pair of stairs above the other: which of course, notwithstanding the difficulty of supposing any apartment above the transit room, would be universally understood to mean over head: yet in fact it was in a separate building, on the other side of the court mentioned.
