Fundamentalis Figura Geometrica, primas tantum lineas circuli quadraturae possibilitatis ostendens. By Niels Erichsen (Nicolaus Ericius), shipbuilder, of Copenhagen. Copenhagen, 1755, 12mo.
This was a gift from my oldest friend who was not a relative, Dr. Samuel Maitland of the "Dark Ages."[358] He found it among his books, and could not imagine how he came by it: I could have told him. He once collected interpretations of the Apocalypse: and auction lots of such {164} books often contain quadratures. The wonder is he never found more than one.
The quadrature is not worth notice. Erichsen is the only squarer I have met with who has distinctly asserted the particulars of that reward which has been so frequently thought to have been offered in England. He says that in 1747 the Royal Society on the 2d of June, offered to give a large reward for the quadrature of the circle and a true explanation of magnetism, in addition to L30,000 previously promised for the same. I need hardly say that the Royal Society had not L30,000 at that time, and would not, if it had had such a sum, have spent it on the circle, nor on magnetic theory; nor would it have coupled the two things. On this book, see _Notes and Queries_, 1st S., xii, 306. Perhaps Erichsen meant that the L30,000 had been promised by the Government, and the addition by the Royal Society.
October 8, 1866. I receive a letter from a cyclometer who understands that a reward is offered to any one who will square the circle, and that all competitors are to send their plans to me. The hoaxers have not yet failed out of the land.
