Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/270

256 The area of a circle is made four-fifths of the circumscribed square: proved on an assumption which it is purposed to explain in a longer essay. The author, as Q. E. D., was in controversy with the Athenæum journal, and criticised a correspondent, D., who wrote against a certain class of discoverers. He believed the common theories of hydrostatics to be wrong, and one of his questions was —

This the Athenæum published—but without some Italics, for which the editor was sharply reproved, as a sufficient specimen of the quod erat D. monstrandum: on which the author remarks —'D,—Wherefore the e caret? is it D apostrophe? D', D'M, D'Mo, D'Monstrandum; we cannot find the wit of it.' This I conjecture to contain an illusion to the name of the supposed author; but whether De Mocritus, De Mosthenes, or De Moivre was intended, I am not willing to decide.

This is the almanac of a sect of Christians who keep the Jewish Sabbath, having a chapel at Mill Yard, Goodman's Fields. They wrote controversial works, and perhaps do so still; but I never chanced to see one.

The author published two tracts under this title, containing different alleged proofs: but neither gives any notice of the change. Both contain the same preface, complaining of the British Association for refusing to examine the production. I suppose that the author, finding his first proof wrong, invented the second, of which the Association never had the offer; and, feeling sure that they would have equally refused to examine the second, thought it justifiable to present that second as the one which they had refused. Mr. Upton has discovered that the common way of finding the circumference is wrong, would set it