Transcriber’s Note
In the main sections of the text there are many numbered textual notes, many quite lengthy, which the writer chose to keep as close as possible to their references in the text. In the printed book, this resulted in many pages containing only two lines of the main text. The writer acknowledges this in the Preface, but points out the need to keep the notes as close to their references as possible. Many of these notes have footnotes of their own, denoted with the traditional *, †, ‡ symbols.
Notes in the Introduction and Appendix also employ those traditional symbols, which have been resequenced for the sake of uniqueness. The three notes in the Introduction become I1, I2, I3, and those in the Appendix become A1, A2, A3, ... An. If a note is itself footnoted, that note is indicated as ‘Ana’, etc.
The main text employs 386 numeric notes which started with ‘1’ for each section. These have been resequenced across the entire text, again for the sake of uniqueness. Many notes had footnotes of their own, denoted with those traditional symbols. These have have been resequenced as ‘na’, ‘nb’, ‘nc’, etc., where ‘n’ is the note number. Those notes are placed following the note.
Any internal references to the notes, of course, were modified to employ the new sequence.
In this version, footnotes have been collected at the end of the text, and are linked for ease of reference.
Given the publication date (1813), spelling remained somewhat fluid. So, especially in quoted text, the text mostly remains as printed unless it is very obviously a typo (e.g. ‘celebratrd’, or ‘inhahitants’), or where there is a great preponderance of another variant of a word elsewhere. There were two instances of a missing ‘of’ which may have been in error.
| [131.31] | The making [of] good mathematical instruments | Sic |
| [145.11] | on the fourth day [of] July, 1760. | Sic |
A quoted translation in note 38 ends abruptly with ‘and spreads her light:’ ([lvi.29]) without a closing quotation mark. This has been amended as ‘spreads her light[.”]’
On two pages (pp. 134, 135), ‘Galileo’ is printed as ‘Gallileo’ ([134.33], [134.37] and [135.3]), which we take to be a printer’s lapse.