Page:The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms.djvu/28

 Nor do I doubt, but that this posthumous work would have seen the light in a much more perfect and finished state, if God had granted a longer enjoyment of life to the Author, my most dearly loved father, in whom, by the opinion of the wisest men, among other illustrious gifts this showed itself pre-eminent, that the most difficult matters were unravelled by a sure and easy method, as well as in the fewest words.

You have then (kind Reader) in this little book most amply unfolded the theory of the construction of logarithms, there called by him artificial numbers, for he had this treatise written out beside him several years before the word Logarithm was invented,) in which their nature, characteristics, and various relations to their natural numbers, are clearly demonstrated.

It seemed desirable also to add to the theory an Appendix as to the construction of another and better kind of logarithms (mentioned by the Author in the preface to his Rabdologiæ) in which the logarithm of unity is 0.

''After this follows the last fruit of his labours, pointing to the ultimate perfecting of his Logarithmic Trigonometry, namely certain very remarkable propositions for the resolu- tion of spherical triangles not quadrantal, without dividing them into quadrantal or rectangular triangles. These propositions, which are absolutely general, he had determined to reduce into order and successively to prove, had he not been snatched away from us by a too hasty death.''

We have also taken care to have printed some Studies on the above-mentioned Propositions, and on the new kind of Logarithms, by that most excellent Mathematician Henry Briggs, public Professor at London, who for the singular friendship which subsisted between him and my father of illustrious memory, took upon himself, in the most willing spirit, the very heavy labour of computing this new Canon, the method of its creation and the explanation of its use