Ordnance. That an officer, commencing his scientific career, should be
misled by such praises, was both natural and pardonable; but that the
Council of the Royal Society should adopt their opinion so heedlessly,
and maintain it so pertinaciously, was as cruel to the observer as it
was injurious to the interests of science.

It might have been imagined that such praises, together with the Copley
medal, presented to Captain Sabine by the Royal Society, and the medal
of Lalande, given to him by the Institute of France, had arisen from
such a complete investigation of his observations, as should place them
beyond the reach even of criticism. But, alas! the Royal Society may
write, and nobody will attend; its medals have lost their lustre;
and even the Institute of France may find that theirs cannot confer
immortality. That learned body is in the habit of making most
interesting and profound reports on any memoirs communicated to it;
nothing escapes the penetration of their committees appointed for such
purposes. Surely, when they enter on the much more important subject
of the award of a medal, unusual pains must be taken with the previous
report, and it might, perhaps, be of some advantage to science, and
might furnish their admirers with arguments in their defence, if they
would publish that on which the decree of their Lalande's medal to
Captain Sabine was founded.

It is far from necessary to my present object, to state all that has
been written and said respecting these pendulum experiments: I shall
confine myself merely to two points; one, the transit observations, I
shall allude to, because I may perhaps show the kind of feeling that
exists respecting them, and possibly enable Captain Sabine to explain
them. The other point, the error in the estimation of the division of
the level, I shall discuss, because it is an admitted fact.

Some opinion may be formed of transit observations, by taking the
difference of times of the passage of any star between the several
wires; supposing the distances of those wires equal, the intervals of
time occupied by the star in passing from one to the other, ought to be
precisely the same. As those times of passing from one wire to another
are usually given to seconds and tenths of seconds, it rarely happens
that the accordance is perfect.

The transit instrument used by Captain Sabine was thirty inches in
length, and the wires are stated to be equi-distant. Out of about 370
transit