determining so important a question; more particularly as, in the very work to which reference was made by Captain Sabine for the purpose of comparing the observations, it was the very first circumstance which occupied the French philosophers, and several pages[1] are filled with the details relative to the determination of the value of the divisions of the level. It would also have been satisfactory, with such an important object in view, to have read off some of the sets after each pair of observations, in order to see how far the system of repetition made the results gradually converge to a limit, and in order to know how many repetitions were sufficient. Such a course would almost certainly have led to a knowledge of the true value of the divisions of the level; for the differences in the altitude of the same star, after a few minutes of time, must, in many instances, have been far too great to have arisen from the change of its altitude: and had these been noticed, they must have been referred to some error in the instrument, which could scarcely, in such circumstances, have escaped detection.
- ↑ See pages 265 to 275 of the Recueil d'Observations Géodesiques, &c. par MM. Biot et Arago, which forms the fourth volume of the Base du Système Metrique.
