Method to discover the difference of the earth's diameters; proving its true ratio to be not less variable than as 45 is to 46, and shortest in its pole's axis 174 miles.... likewise a method for fixing an universal standard for weights and measures. By Thomas Williams.[380] London, 1788, 8vo.
Mr. Williams was a paradoxer in his day, and proposed what was, no doubt, laughed at by some. He proposed the sort of plan which the French--independently of course--carried into effect a few years after. He would have the 52d degree of latitude divided into 100,000 parts and each part a geographical yard. The geographical ton was to be the cube of a geographical yard filled with sea-water taken some leagues from land. All multiples and sub-divisions were to be decimal.
I was beginning to look up those who had made similar proposals, when a learned article on the proposal of a {172} metrical system came under my eye in the _Times_ of Sept. 15, 1863. The author cites Mouton,[381] who would have the minute of a degree divided into 10,000 _virgulae_; James Cassini,[382] whose foot was to be six thousandths of a minute; and Paucton,[383] whose foot was the 400,000th of a degree. I have verified the first and third statements; surely the second ought to be the _six-thousandth_.
An inquiry into the Copernican system ... wherein it is proved, in the clearest manner, that the earth has only her diurnal motion ... with an attempt to point out the only true way whereby mankind can receive any real benefit from the study of the heavenly bodies. By John Cunningham.[384] London, 1789, 8vo.
The "true way" appears to be the treatment of heaven and earth as emblematical of the Trinity.
Cosmology. An inquiry into the cause of what is called gravitation or attraction, in which the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the preservation and operations of all nature, are deduced from an universal principle of efflux and reflux. By T. Vivian,[385] vicar of Cornwood, Devon. Bath, 1792, 12mo.
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Attraction, an influx of matter to the sun; centrifugal force, the solar rays; cohesion, the pressure of the atmosphere. The confusion about centrifugal _force_, so called, as demanding an external agent, is very common.
