The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Tannery - Deux nouvelles lettres inédites de Descartes à Mersenne
These are two of the hitherto unedited letters of Descartes, of which an account was given in the Archiv. (IV, 3, pp. 442-449; 4, 529-556). Subsequent research has convinced T. that, besides the two now published, there are yet missing only eleven. He gives, so far as they are known, the subject and dates of these letters, and their numbers in the classifications of Arbogast and Lahire. The two letters published are in the library of Victor Cousin at Sorbonne. The first contains some uncomplimentary remarks upon L’Aristarchus Samius of Roberval; complaints that a professor of Utrecht, in a work entitled Fundamenta Physics, has simply copied his results along with many mistakes of his own; inquiries concerning a new kind of glasses which a Paris optician has made; and replies to Mersenne's inquiries regarding oscillating bodies. The second is very short, but mentions that he has been for two months regularly observing the variations of the barometer and speculating regarding its explanation.