[112] The apparent number is 2,935, but 12 of these are duplicates.
[113] By Bessel (chapter XIII., [§ 277]).
[114] The relation between the work of Flamsteed and that of Newton was expressed with more correctness than good taste by the two astronomers themselves, in the course of some quarrel about the lunar theory: “Sir Isaac worked with the ore I had dug.” “If he dug the ore, I made the gold ring.”
[115] Rigaud, in the memoirs prefixed to Bradley’s Miscellaneous Works.
[116] A telescopic star named 37 Camelopardi in Flamsteed’s catalogue.
[117] The story is given in T. Thomson’s History of the Royal Society, published more than 80 years afterwards (1812), but I have not been able to find any earlier authority for it. Bradley’s own account of his discovery gives a number of details, but has no allusion to this incident.
[118] It is k sin C A B, where k is the constant of aberration.
[119] His observations as a matter of fact point to a value rather greater than 18″, but he preferred to use round numbers. The figures at present accepted are 18″·42 and 13″·75, so that his ellipse was decidedly less flat than it should have been.
[120] Recherches sur la précession des équinoxes et sur la nutation de l’axe de la terre.
[121] The word “geometer” was formerly used, as “géomètre” still is in French, in the wider sense in which “mathematician” is now customary.