NO. 1.
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improper position which have already been explained. I do not trouble the reader with the calculations: if I assert an untruth, I shall hardly escape contradiction.[1]
There is another inaccuracy, which though of less consequence, ought not to escape notice. One would naturally suppose when Mr. Maskelyne found the Watch went at this rate of gaining on mean time, he would have been very exact in his time of comparing it with his Clock; but on the contrary we find he was so irregular as to vary his comparisons on succeeding days from half an hour to four hours and forty-eight minutes, and this not for a time or two, but for one third of the whole time he had it.[2]
- ↑ In his answer to Mr. Mudge, Dr. Maskelyne fancied he had an avenue of escape, by appealing to the commonplace resort, that it is impossible to please everybody; and alleging that Harrison and Mudge did not agree on the point. But his antagonist clearly shows him inconsistent in his efforts. He had thought a rate deduced from nine days going, and applied to a trial of six weeks quite insufficient; and yet he afterwards founds that a rate, taken from one month and applied to six was proper enough; forgetting that one month bears a less proportion to six, than nine days do to six weeks.
- ↑ The contrast between this inattention in a person whose accustomed habits, as they were to be presumed, conduced to precision on such a point, and the punctuality of the King at his private observatory, is too remarkable, and withal too important to be passed over; for though we do not say that Dr. Maskelyne's neglect contributed to the exactness which William Harrison noticed; because it would have been seen
