Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/155

Rh errors were thus detected, and a list of these errata was published in the Nautical Almanac for 1832: these may be called

An error being detected in one of these errata, in the following Nautical Almanac we find an

But in this very erratum of the second order a new mistake was introduced larger than any of the original mistakes. In the year next following there ought to have been found

In the "Tables de la Lune," by M. P. A. Hansen, 4to, 1857, published at the expense of the English Government under the direction of the Astronomer Royal, is to be found a list of errata amounting to 155. In the 21st of these original errata there have been found three mistakes. These are duly noted in a newly-printed list of errata discovered during computations made with them in the "Nautical Almanac;" so that we now have the errata of an erratum of the original work.

This list of errata from the office of the "Nautical Almanac" is larger than the original list. The total number of errors at present (1862) discovered in Hansen's "Tables of the Moon" amounts to above three hundred and fifty. In making these remarks I have no intention of imputing the slightest blame to the Astronomer Royal, who, like other men, cannot avoid submitting to inevitable fate. The only circumstance which is really extraordinary is that, when it was demonstrated that all tables are capable of being computed by machinery, and even when a machine existed which