[240] "Algebra is the curious science of scholars, and particularly for a general of an army, or a captain, in order quickly to draw up an army in battle array and to number the musketeers and pikemen who compose it, without the figures of arithmetic. This science has five special figures of this kind: P means _plus_ in commerce and _pikemen_ in the army; M means _minus_, and _musketeer_ in the art of war;... R signifies _root_ in the measurement of a cube, and _rank_ in _the army_; Q means _square_ (French _quare_, as then spelled) in both cases; C means _cube_ in mensuration, and _cavalry_ in arranging batallions and squadrons. As for the operations of this science, they are as follows: to add a _plus_ and a _plus_, the sum will be _plus_; to add _minus_ with _plus_, take the less from the greater and the remainder will be the sum required or the number to be found. I say this only in passing, for the benefit of those who are wholly ignorant of it." [241] He refers to the _Joannis de Beaugrand ... Geostatice, seu de vario pondere gravium secundum varia a terrae (centro) intervalla dissertatio mathematica_, Paris, 1636. Pascal relates that de Beaugrand sent all of Roberval's theorems on the cycloid and Fermat's on maxima and minima to Galileo in 1638, pretending that they were his own. [242] More (1614-1687) was a theologian, a fellow of Christ College, Cambridge, and a Christian Platonist. [243] Matthew Hale (1609-1676) the famous jurist, wrote a number of tracts on scientific, moral, and religious subjects. These were collected and published in 1805. [244] They might have been attributed to many a worse man than Dr. Hales (1677-1761), who was a member of the Royal Society and of the Paris Academy, and whose scheme for the ventilation of prisons reduced the mortality at the Savoy prison from one hundred to only four a year. The book to which reference is made is _Vegetable Staticks or an Account of some statical experiments on the sap in Vegetables_, 1727. [245] _Pleas of the Crown; or a Methodical Summary of the Principal Matters relating to the subject_, 1678. [246] _Thomae Streete Astronomia Carolina, a new theory of the celestial motions_, 1661. It also appeared at Nuremberg in 1705, and at London in 1710 and 1716 (Halley's editions). He wrote other works on astronomy. [247] This was the Sir Thomas Street (1626-1696) who passed sentence of death on a Roman Catholic priest for saying mass. The priest was reprieved by the king, but in the light of the present day one would think the justice more in need of pardon. He took part in the trial of the Rye House Conspirators in 1683. [248] Edmund Halley (1656-1742), who succeeded Wallis (1703) as Savilian professor of mathematics at Oxford, and Flamsteed (1720) as head of the Greenwich observatory. It is of interest to note that he was instrumental in getting Newton's _Principia_ printed.