Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 053.djvu/102

has badly expressed his own thoughts, for his tables make it that the equinoctial must either swell or contract itself. And this is very excusable in Edward Wright, for at that time geometricians had no notion of Fluxions, or the increase of magnitude by local motion.

Mr. West and his editor have therefore fallen into this error; they have taken the words but not the sense of Edward Wright, and the Critical Reviewers vindicate them, and make it as though this property had been communicated to the Royal Society by Mr. West, the particulars of which may be seen in the Review just now mentioned.

The proposed demonstration of this tangential property at page 58 of Mr. West's book, is no demonstration at all, there is nothing more plain, than that, in order to have the meridians at equal distances, the degrees of latitude must be enlarged to the same proportion in every part, as the circular meridians are nearer towards the poles, which proportion is as the cosine of the latitude to the radius.

XIX. A