Finally I arrived at the result that the
inequality would be about 3"; just such a magnitude as was required. I
slipped this into Whewell's door. This is, to the time of writing
(1853), the last improvement of any importance in the Solar
Theory. Some little remaining work went on to Dec. 14th, and then,
being thoroughly tired, I laid by the work for revision at some future
time. I however added a Postscript to my Royal Society Paper on Solar
Errors, notifying this result.
"On Dec. 19th I went to Bury. While there I heard from Whewell that
Woodhouse was dead. I returned to Cambridge and immediately made known
that I was a candidate for the now vacant Plumian Professorship. Of
miscellaneous scientific business, I find that on Oct. 13th Professor
Barlow of Woolwich prepared a memorial to the Board of Longitude
concerning his fluid telescope (which I had seen at Woodford), which
was considered on Nov. 1st, and I had some correspondence with him in
December. In June and August my Trigonometry was printing.
"On Jan. 5th, 1828, I came from London. It seems that I had been
speculating truly 'without book' on perturbations of planetary
elements, for on Jan. 17th and 18th I wrote a Paper on a supposed
error of Laplace, and just at the end I discovered that he was quite
right: I folded up the Paper and marked it 'A Lesson.
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