thor of a celebrated article in the
_Dublin Review_, in defence of the {99} Church of Rome, seeing that
Drinkwater Bethune[165] makes use of the authority of Fromondus, but for
another purpose, sneers at him for bringing up a "musty old Professor." If
he had known Fromondus, and used him he would have helped his own case,
which is very meagre for want of knowledge.[166]

Advis a Monseigneur l'eminentissime Cardinal Duc de Richelieu, sur la
Proposition faicte par le Sieur Morin pour l'invention des longitudes.
Paris, 1634, 8vo.[167]

This is the Official Report of the Commissioners appointed by the Cardinal,
of whom Pascal is the one now best known, to consider Morin's plan. See the
full account in Delambre, _Hist. Astr. Mod._ ii. 236, etc.

THE METIUS APPROXIMATION.

Arithmetica et Geometria practica. By Adrian Metius. Leyden, 1640,
4to.[168]

This book contains the celebrated approximation _guessed at_ by his father,
Peter Metius,[169] namely that the diameter is {100} to the circumference
as 113 to 355. The error is at the rate of about a foot in 2,000 miles.
Peter Metius, having his attention called to the subject by the false
quadrature of Duchesne, found that the ratio lay between 333/106 and
377/120. He then took the liberty of taking the mean of both numerators and
denominators, giving 355/113. He had no right to presume that this mean was
better than either of the extremes; nor does it appear positively that he
did so. He published nothing; but his son Adrian,[170] when Van Ceulen's
work showed how near his father's result came to the truth, first made it
known in the work above. (See _Eng. Cyclop._, art. "Quadrature.")

ON INHABITABLE PLANETS.

A discourse concerning a new world and another planet, in two books.
London, 1640, 8vo.[171]

Cosmotheoros: or conjectures concerning the planetary worlds and their
inhabitants. Written in Latin, by Christianus Huyghens. This
translation was first published in 1698. Glasgow, 1757, 8vo. [The
original is also of 1698.][172]

The first work is by Bishop Wilkins, being the third edition, [first in
1638] of the first book, "That the Moon may be a Planet"; and the first
edition of the second work, {101} "That the Earth may be a Planet." [See
more under the reprint of 1802.] Whether other planets be inhabited or not,
that is, crowded with organisations some of them having consciousness, is
not for me to decide; b