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THE GREEKS.
59

and portions of the second are now missing. The Mathematical Collections seems to have been written by Pappus to supply the geometers of his time with a succinct analysis of the most difficult mathematical works and to facilitate the study of them by explanatory lemmas. But these lemmas are selected very freely, and frequently have little or no connection with the subject on hand. However, he gives very accurate summaries of the works of which he treats. The Mathematical Collections is invaluable to us on account of the rich information it gives on various treatises by the foremost Greek mathematicians, which are now lost. Mathematicians of the last century considered it possible to restore lost works from the résumé by Pappus alone.

We shall now cite the more important of those theorems in the Mathematical Collections which are supposed to be original with Pappus. First of all ranks the elegant theorem re-discovered by Guldin, over 1000 years later, that the volume generated by the revolution of a plane curve which lies wholly on one side of the axis, equals the area of the curve multiplied by the circumference described by its centre of gravity. Pappus proved also that the centre of gravity of a triangle is that of another triangle whose vertices lie upon the sides of the first and divide its three sides in the same ratio. In the fourth book are new and brilliant propositions on the quadratrix which indicate an intimate acquaintance with curved surfaces. He generates the quadratrix as follows: Let a spiral line be drawn upon a right circular cylinder; then the perpendiculars to the axis of the cylinder drawn from each point of the spiral line form the surface of a screw. A plane passed through one of these perpendiculars, making any convenient angle with the base of the cylinder, cuts the screw-surface in a curve, the orthogonal projection of which upon the base is the quadratrix. A second mode of generation is