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SIR,Dated June 6, 1764.
Read Nov. 15,
1764.
IAM greatly obliged to you for your candid and judicious remarks on my observation of Venus on the Sun, which I received from my much esteemed friend Dr. Franklin. I wrote to the Dr. pretty largely on the subject, which I desired him to communicate to you: but when I had the pleasure of a visit from him last summer, he could not recollect whether he had done it or not.
I therefore beg leave now to trouble you with the substance of it. Your remarks turned on two points, the longitude of the place of observation, and the equation of time when found by equal altitudes. As to the first, I was fo diffident of the observation on the Moon, that I chose to keep to the longitude of St. John's, as set down by Sir Jonas Moore, who makes it 52° 50′ West of Greenwich. Though I did not think it needful to mention this doubt in the pamphlet, which was published soon after I got home, to gratify the curiosity of my countrymen, yet I expressed it fully in a written account of the observation, drawn up in a different form, and sent to the late Dr. Bradley, but which I believe never reached his hands.
