It was not until the year 1786, that the American Philosophical Society were enabled to publish a second volume of their Transactions:[227] it then made its appearance. Into that volume is introduced a letter to the Society, in the original Latin, (accompanied with an English translation,)[228] from the celebrated C. Mayer, the Elector Palatine’s[229] Astronomer at Manheim, dated so long before as the 24th of April, 1778. The receipt of that letter had been acknowledged by Mr. Rittenhouse, according to a special order of the Society, so early as the 20th of August, 1779; and the answer, it is presumable, was duly transmitted to Mr. Mayer. Yet, although there was a lapse of seven years, from the date of Mr. Rittenhouse’s letter to the time of Mr. Mayer’s communication being printed in the Society’s Transactions, the former was, by some unaccountable circumstance, omitted and unnoticed! Nor will the reader’s surprise on this occasion be diminished, when he learns, that a member of the Society, having obtained from Mr. Rittenhouse a copy of his letter, had it read at their stated meeting on the 16th of March, 1792,—twelve years and a half after its date; that it was, thereupon, “referred to the committee of selection and publication:” and, notwithstanding, by some other fatality, that letter remained unpublished until now; being twenty-one years afterwards! ----- Footnote 227: In the beginning of the same year, Mr. Rittenhouse was elected one of the twelve Counsellors of the American Philosophical Society; an office in that institution, created by the incorporating act of the 15th of March, 1780. Footnote 228: There was some unaccountable mismanagement in the whole of this business, on the part of the society. Mr. Mayer’s letter is published entire, in the original Latin: but the translation ends, abruptly, in the middle of a paragraph. When Mr. Rittenhouse was directed by the society to answer that letter, he requested the writer of these memoirs to furnish him with an English translation of it, for the purpose of comparing with it one which he had himself attempted. That translation (which, by Mr. Rittenhouse’s desire, was made to conform pretty closely to the original,) is inserted in the Appendix, entire, together with the hitherto unpublished answer. Footnote 229: Charles Theodore, Duke of Bavaria, who is denominated by Lalande, “an illustrious patron of the sciences.”