Page:Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies, from the papers of Thomas Jefferson - Volume 1.djvu/273

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LETTER LXXVIILI1.

TO DR. STYLES.

7 Paris, July 17, 1785. SIR,

I have long deferred doing myself the honor of writing to you, wishing for an opportunity to accompany my letter with a copy of the Bibliothéque Physico-ceconomique ; a book published here lately in four small volumes, and which gives an account of all the improvements in the arts which have been made for some years past. I flatter myself you will find in it many things agreeable and useful. I accompany it with the volumes of the Connoissance des tems for the years 1781, 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787. But why, you will ask, do I send you old almanacks, which are proverbially useless? Because, in these publications have appeared, from time to time, some of the most precious things in astronomy. I[ have searched out those particular volumes which might be valua- ble to you on this account. ‘That of 1781, contains de la Caille’s catalogue of fixed stars reduced to the commencement of that year, and a table of the aberrations and nutations of the principal stars. 1784 contains the same catalogue with the nebuleuses of Messier. 1785 contains the famous catalogue of Hamsteed, with the positions of the stars reduced to the beginning of the year 1784, and which supersedes the use of that immense book. 1786 gives you Euler’s lunar tables corrected; and 1787, the tables for the planet Herschel. ‘The two last needed not an apology, as not being within the description of old almanacks. It is fixed on grounds which scarcely admit a doubt, that the planet Herschel was seen by Mayer in the year 1756, and was considered by him as one of the zodiacal stars, and as such, arranged in his catalogue, bemg the 964th which he describes. ‘This 964th of Mayer has been since missing, and the calculations for the planet Herschel shew that it should have been, at the time of Mayer’s observation, where he places his 964th star. ‘The volume of 1787, gives you Mayer’s catalogue of the zodiacal stars. ‘The researches of the natural philosophers of Europe seem mostly in the field of chemis- try, and here, principally, on the subjects of air and fire. ‘The analysis of these two subjects, presents to us very new ideas. When speaking of the Bibliotheque Physico-ceconomique, I should have observed, that since its publication, a man in this city has invented a method of moving a vessel on the water, by a machine worked within the vessel. I went to see it. He did not know

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