Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 053.djvu/100

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XVIII. Remarks on the Censure of Mercator's Chart, in a posthumous Work of Mr. West, of Exeter: In a Letter to Thomas Birch, D. D. Secretary to the Royal Society, from Mr. Samuel Dunn.

Rev. Sir,
Read Nov. 11,
1762.I should not be so ready to trouble you with the contents of this letter, had I not the highest opinion of your readiness to assist the scientific, in all matters wherein you are able.

I request therefore your consideration, between this time and the next when I have the pleasure to see you, if any paper has been printed in the Philosophical Transactions, concerning a sphere being inscribed in a hollow cylinder, and swelling its surface to the sides of the cylinder, to construct thereby a more true and accurate chart for the purposes of navigation, than that which was invented by Edward Wright, and hath long gone under the name of Mercator.

The reason why I ask this is, because there is lately published, a posthumous work of one Mr. West of Exeter, revised by J. Rowe, in which it is strongly insisted on, that the graduation of Mercator's chart is erroneous, and that the same, if rightly correspondent with the loxodromiques or rhumbs, should be graduated as a line of natural tangents, from the equinoctial to the poles.

Now this error might have past the less observed, but the Critical Review of last month sets it forth as amasterly

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