tween the sequestrators and creditors, who (not being able to
ballance the account where there appeare so many numbers, and much troubled
at the sight of so many crosses and circles in the superstitious Algebra
and that black art of Geometry) will, no doubt, determine once in their
lives to become figure-casters, and so vote them all to be throwen into the
fire, if some good body doe not reprieve them for pye-bottoms, for which
purposes you know analogicall numbers are incomparably apt, if they be
accurately calculated."

Pell afterwards told Wallis[578] that the papers had fallen into the hands
of Dr. Busby,[579] and Collins[580] writes that they were left in the hands
of Dr. Thorndike,[581] a prebendary of Westminster; whence Rigaud[582]
seems to say that Thorndike had left them to Dr. Busby. Birch[583] says
that he procured for the Royal Society four boxes from Busby's trustees,
containing papers of Warner and Pell: but there is no other tradition of
such things in the Society. But in the Birch manuscripts at the British
Museum, there turns up, as printed in what we call the Museum collection, a
list of Warner's papers, with _Collins's_ receipt to Dr. Thorndike at the
bottom, and engagement to restore them on demand. The date is December 14,
1667; Wallis's statement being in 1693. It is possible that Busby may be a
mistake altogether: he was very unlikely to have had charge of any
mathematical papers: there may have been a confusion between the Prebendary
of Westminster and the Head Master of Westminster School. If so, in all
probability Thorndike handed {314} the cumbrous lot over to the notorious
collector of mathematical papers, blessing himself that he got rid of them
in a manner which would insure their return if he were called upon by the
owners to restore them. It is much against this hypothesis that Dodson, who
certainly recalculated, can say nothing more about Warner than a repetition
of Wallis's story: though, had Collins kept the papers, they would probably
have been in Jones's possession at the very time when Dodson, who was a
friend of Jones and a user of his library, was engaged on his own
computations. But even books, and still more manuscripts, are often
singularly overlooked; and it remains not very improbable that Warner's
table is now at Shirburn Castle, among the unexamined manuscripts.

CYCLOMETRY AND STEEL PENS.

_Redit labor actus in orbem._[584] Among the matters which have come to me
sin