Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1872 edition. Excerpt: ... Under this assumed name this little piece of satire was written to expose the ignorance of Sinclar in his Hydrostatical Writings, by James Gregory, a most eminent mathematician, and Professor of Mathematics in the University of St. Andrews, and afterwards at Edinburgh.--He was the indisputable inventor of the reflecting telescope. Born in Aberdeenshire in 1638, he died at Edinburgh in October 1675. On returning home late one evening, after showing some of his students the satellites of Jupiter, he was suddenly struck blind, and in three days afterwards expired. The 'Preface to the Reader' prefixed to this work is really so very clever and amusingly severe, that, for its preservation, I here subjoin it: --'Reader, --I doubt not but thou are surprised to find 'me in print: and I assure you, that it is not more above your hope and expectation, then it is contrair to my former 'designs and resolutions: But as Atis his dumbness from 'the womb could not keep him from bursting into speech 'against those souldiers whom he saw ready to have killed 'his father; so my general insufficiency in all things else, 'cannot keep my natural affection in longer silence, when I 'see my bountiful Mother, this ancient and famous Uni'versity, and all her beautiful Daughters, the other Univer'sities of this Kingdom, in hazard to be murdered by one 'of their unnatural children. 'And finding that he with whom I have to do, hath given 'but a very lame and partial account of the occasion of 'our dehate, I judge it both thy interest and mine, that I 'correct it by a more full, perfect and impartial one: For 'as the Magicians feigned miracles found greater belief 'with the Egyptians, then the true ones of Moses; so a false information having nothing to contradict it, ..