1810. In this year Jean Wood, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Virginia (Richmond),[529] addressed a printed circular to "Dr. Herschel, Astronomer, Greenwich Observatory." No mistake was more common than the natural one of imagining that the _Private Astronomer_ of the king was the _Astronomer Royal_. The letter was on the {234} difference of velocities of the two sides of the earth, arising from the composition of the rotation and the orbital motion. The _paradox_ is a fair one, and deserving of investigation; but, perhaps it would not be easy to deduce from it tides, trade-winds, aerolithes, &c., as Mr. Wood thought he had done in a work from which he gives an extract, and which he describes as published. The composition of rotations, &c., is not for the world at large: the paradox of the non-rotation of the moon about her axis is an instance. How many persons know that when a wheel rolls on the ground, the lowest point is moving upwards, the highest point forwards, and the intermediate points in all degrees of betwixt and between? This is too short an explanation, with some good difficulties. The Elements of Geometry. In 2 vols. [By the Rev. J. Dobson,[530] B.D.] Cambridge, 1815. 4to. Of this unpunctuating paradoxer I shall give an account in his own way: he would not stop for any one; why should I stop for him? It is worth while to try how unpunctuated sentences will read. The reverend J Dobson BD late fellow of saint Johns college Cambridge was rector of Brandesburton in Yorkshire he was seventh wrangler in 1798 and died in 1847 he was of that sort of eccentricity which permits account of his private life if we may not rather say that in such cases private life becomes public there is a tradition that he was called Death Dobson on account of his head and aspect of countenance being not very unlike the ordinary pictures of a human skull his mode of life is reported to have been very singular whenever he visited Cambridge he was never known to go twice to the same inn he never would sleep at the rectory with another person in the house some ancient charwoman used to attend to the house but never slept in it he has been known in the time of coach travelling to have {235} deferred his return to Yorkshire on account of his disinclination to travel with a lady in the coach he continued his mathematical studies until his death and till his executors sold the type all his tracts to the number of five were kept in type at the university press none of these tracts had any stops except full stops at the end of paragraphs only neither had they capitals except one at the beginning of a paragraph so that a full stop was generally followed by some white as there is not a single proper name in the whole of the book I have I am not able to say whether he would have used capitals before proper names I have inserted them as usual for which I hope his spirit will forgive me if I be wrong he also published the