Mr. Grant, the celebrated author of the History of Physical
Astronomy, writes to the Times of Sept. 20 to demonstrate again what seemed scarcely to need further demonstration,—that the Pascal and Newton correspondence exposed by Sir David Brewster at Dundee cannot be genuine. Mr. Grant shows, for instance, that Newton calculated the masses of the Earth, of Jupiter, of Saturn twice in his life, once (in 1687) employing for that purpose the observations of the solar parallax obtained by Flamsteed and 'Cassini,—the second time in 1726, using the observations obtained by Cassini, Pound, and Bradley. Pascal died in 1662, before these last observations had been made, and could not have used them. Yet the documents in M. Chasles' possession bring out precisely the same masses of the Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, and bring them out, mind, as results of Pascal's calculations before 1662, which resulted from Newton's second calculation in 1726,— and are evidently borrowed from it,—and differ widely from the Newton's first calculations which are founded on the only observations of the solar parallax which Pascal could haVe used. A similar criticism applies to the calculation of planetary densi- ties made by Pascal, according to M. Chasles' correspondence, which are taken straight out of Newton's Prinoipia, and yet could not have been obtained by Pascal on any data known in his life- time. M. Chasles' correspondence cannot stand exposures such as these. By this time, if he is candid, he must have himself given up its authenticity.
Previous page
