than usual attention was bestowed, is the more appropriate, because it was essential to the purposes for which the latitudes of the French stations were required, that the observations should always be conducted with the utmost possible regard to accuracy.
"It would appear, therefore, that in a repeating circle of six inches, the disadvantages of a smaller image enabling a less precise contact or bisection, and of an arch of less radius admitting of a less minute subdivision, may be compensated by the principle of repetition."
Captain Sabine has pointed out Maranham and Spitzbergen as places most favourable to the comparison. Let us take the former of these places, and compare the observations made there with the small repeating instrument of six inches diameter, with those made by the French astronomers at Formentera, with a repeating circle of forty-one centi-metres, or about sixteen inches in diameter, made by Fortin. It is singular that this instrument was directed, by the French Board of Longitude, to be made expressly for this survey, and the French astronomers paid particular attention to it, from the circumstance of some doubts having been entertained respecting the value of the principle of repetition.
