Page:Reflections on the decline of science in England - Babbage - 1830.pdf/194

 next step is to make an observation; but in order to try both himself and the instrument, let him take the altitude of some fixed object, a terrestrial one, and having registered the result, let him derange the adjustment, and repeat the process fifty or a hundred times. This will not merely afford him excellent practice, but enable him to judge of his own skill.

The first step in the use of every instrument, is to find the limits within which its employer can measure the same object under the same circumstances. It is only from a knowledge of this, that he can have confidence in his measures of the same object under different circumstances, and after that, of different objects under different circumstances.

These principles are applicable to almost all instruments. If a person is desirous of ascertaining heights by a mountain barometer, let him begin by adjusting the instrument in his own study; and having made the upper contact, let him write down the reading of the vernier, and then let him derange the upper adjustment only, re-adjust, and repeat the reading. When he is satisfied about the limits within which he can make that adjustment, let him do the same repeatedly with the lower; but let him not, until