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 asked him why he would not publish his conjectures, as conjectures, and instanced that Kepler had communicated his; and though he had not gone near so far as Kepler, yet Kepler's guesses were so just and happy that they had been proved and demonstrated by him. His answer was, "I do not deal in conjectures." But, on my talking to him about the four observations that had been made of the comet of 1680, at 574 years distance, and asking him the particular times, he opened his Principia, which laid on the table, and showed me the particular periods, viz,: 1st. The Julium Sidus, in the time of Justinian, in 1106, in 1680.

"And I, observing that he said there of that comet, 'incidet in corpus solis,' and in the next paragraph adds, 'stellæ fixæ refici possunt,' told him I thought he owned there what we had been talking about, viz.: that the comet would drop into the sun, and that fixed stars were recruited and replenished by comets when they dropped into them; and, consequently, that the sun would be recruited too; and asked him why he would not own as fully what he thought of the sun as well as what he thought of the fixed stars. He said, that concerned us more; and, laughing, added, that he had said enough for people to know his meaning."

In the summer of 1725, a French translation of the chronological MS., of which the Abbé Conti had been permitted, some time previous, to have a copy, was published at Paris, in violation of all good faith. The Punic Abbé had continued true to his promise of secrecy while he remained in England; but no sooner did he reach Paris than he placed the manuscript into the hands of M. Freret, a learned antiquarian, who translated the work, and accompanied it with an attempted refutation of the leading points of the system. In November, of the same year, Newton received a presentation copy of this publication, which bore the title of. Soon afterward a paper entitled,