Sundry astronomical observations were made by this officer, while a captain in the British navy, in the years 1757, 8, and 9; which were reported to the admiralty on the 14th of April, 1760, by Dr. Bradley, then astronomer-royal. See Dr. Bradley’s letter of that date, to the Secretary of the Admiralty; published (among other papers) in the year 1770, by order of the board of longitude, at the end of T. Mayer’s Tables and Method of finding the Longitude; edited by Dr. Maskelyne. Footnote 90: The Observatory, a very handsome and respectable one, was constructed at Gotha in the year 1788, under the auspices of the then reigning Duke of Saxe-Gotha, a zealous patron of astronomy. It is placed on an eminence, a league from the city, and is built entirely of hewn stone. Mr. de Zach, a native of Hungary, an experienced astronomer, was appointed by the duke its director. The instruments with which the Gotha Observatory is furnished are chiefly English, as are those of most of the celebrated European observatories. Among these, is a transit telescope, by Ramsden; and Mr. Lalande mentions, in his _Astronomie_ (in the year 1792,) that there were to be added, two murals of eight feet radius, an entire circle of eight feet diameter, a great zenith-sector, &c. but that Mr. Ramsden, who was employed to make them, found great difficulty in supplying all the demands for instruments, which his great reputation occasioned. It is well known, that the first improvements in astronomical instruments took place in Great-Britain; and both Lalande and de Zach, as well as other foreign astronomers of eminence, have done ample justice to the superior ingenuity and skill of the artists of that country, in this department of mechanism. The ingenious Mr. Edmund Stone, in his _Supplement to the English Translation of Mr. Bion’s Construction and Use of Mathematical Instruments_, (published in 1758, nearly forty years after he translated Mr. Bion’s work into English,) observes—that, having set about the business (the translating of this latter work,) he soon perceived that many French instruments were excelled by some of the English of the same kind, in contrivance; and that, as to workmanship, he never did see one French instrument so well framed and divided as some English have been. “For example,” says Mr. Stone, “Mr. Sutton’s quadrants, made above one hundred years ago,” (before the middle of the seventeenth century,) “are the finest divided instruments in the world; and the regularity and exactness of the vast number of circles drawn upon them, is highly delightful to behold. The mural quadrant at the Royal Observatory, at Greenwich, far exceeds that of the Royal Observatory at Paris. Also, the theodolites of Messrs. Sisson and Heath, the clocks and watches of Messrs. Graham, Tompion and Quare, the orreries of Mr. Graham and Mr. Wright, and many