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6G) Olan TRAVELS
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to
Stockholm, to examine the local fituation and contiguous
grounds, where the French academicians, in the year 1736, de-
termined the length of an arch of the meridian, as it croffes
the polar circle; with general reflections on the figure of the
earth, and upon the neceffity of new meafurements to afcertain
exactly the equation; read at a public meeting of the faid
academy, on the 23d of October, 1799, by Sons Swamberg.”’
“« The aftronomer, as well as the mathematician, are perfe@ly
agreed, that the fpherical form of the earth’s figure, contains
elements that muft be taken into account, if we would enory
from theory the precife quantity of the proceffion of the equi-
noxes and the nutation of the earth’s axis. Thefe equations,
and others * in effeét lef confiderable, but which in the courfe
of ages will be gradually developed, and will at laft become of
too much importance to be neglected, joined to the influence
which a knowledge more or lefs perfect of the dimenfions of
our planet has on the accuracy of a calculation of all the phe-.
nomena which are in any degree concerned in the effects of the
parallax, have determined the learned for almoft a century and
an half, to make it one of the principal objects of their moft pro-
* In order to fatisfy ourfelves of the exiftence of fuch equations, we have only
recolleét, that the earth not being a perfect fphere, and that the attraction of a
body, whatever be its figure, being the fum of the combined attractions of
all its particles, it neceflarily follows, that the force by which we are drawn to-
wards the fun will not vary exactly in the ratio of the fquare of the diftances,
and that confequently there will bea very flow motion in the line of the apfides,
which however infenfible it may be in the {pace of fome decades of years, is not
on that account the lefs real.
** found
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