"Mr. James Smith, a gentleman residing near Liverpool, was some years ago seized with the _morbus cyclometricus_.[203] The symptoms soon took a defined form: his circumference shrank into exactly 3-1/8 times his diameter, instead of close to 3-16/113, which the mathematician knows to be so near to truth that the error is hardly at the rate of a foot in 2,000 miles. This shrinking of the circumference remained until it became absolutely necessary that it should be examined by the British Association. This body, which as Mr. James Smith found to his sorrow, has some interest in 'jealously guarding the mysteries of their profession,' refused at first to entertain the question. On this Mr. Smith changed his 'tactics' and the name of his paper, and smuggled in the subject under the form of 'The Relations of a Circle inscribed in a Square'! The paper was thus forced upon the Association, for Mr. Smith informs us that he {106} 'gave the Section to understand that he was not the man that would permit even the British Association to trifle with him.' In other words, the Association bore with and were bored with the paper, as the shortest way out of the matter. Mr. Smith also circulated a pamphlet. Some kind-hearted man, who did not know the disorder as well as we do, and who appears in Mr. Smith's handsome octavo as E. M.--the initials of 'eminent mathematician'--wrote to him and offered to show him in a page that he was all wrong. Mr. Smith thereupon opened a correspondence, which is the bulk of the volume. When the correspondence was far advanced, Mr. Smith announced his intention to publish. His benevolent instructor--we mean in intention--protested against the publication, saying 'I do not wish to be gibbeted to the world as having been foolish enough to enter upon what I feel now to have been a ridiculous enterprise.'