DIPLOMATIC GEOMETRY.
MATHEMATICIANS and diplomatists appear to differ widely in their philosophical premises. The former are generally of opinion that it requires two lines to make an angle ; but the Boundary Treaty of 1783, between Great Britain and the United States, described the North-west angle of Nova Scotia as formed by the line drawn from the sources of the St. Croix, and no other. And not long ago, Mr. Justice MENZIES, in his proclamation to the revolted Boers at Natal, described a district as contained between a certain meridian and a certain parallel of latitude, in defiance of Euclid, who lays down the law that two straight lines cannot contain a space. All this must be very puzzling to the surveyors employed by diploma- tists; seeing that all their practical methods of mensuration have been taught them by Euclid and his successors, and that they speak the technical language of their teachers. It is, therefore, highly desirable that a chair should be founded—say in the Lon- don University College—to teach that very peculiar kind of ma- thematics, which, for want of a better name, may be called Diplo- matic Geometry.
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