Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/234

NO. 1. to the public. I beg to be understood as a warm and declared friend to that and every other mode which can be devised of ascertaining the Longitude at sea, so long as they keep within the bounds of reason and probability. Here are now two methods before the public; would to God there were two hundred! The importance of the object would warrant public encouragement to them all; but, called upon to say something on the subject, I think it incumbent upon me to point out those limits beyond which its utility cannot, from the nature of the thing, be extended.

The method of finding the Longitude by the Moon, in which Mr. Maskelyne is in a pecuniary way interested, is this.—If the apparent distance