NEPTUNE

On new tables of the moon's parallax, to be substituted for those of Burckhardt.

Author: 
John Couch Adams
Publication details: 
London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Printed by Eyre and Spottiswoode. Without date, but docketed in pencil as an offprint 'From Nautical Almanac 1856'.
£105.00

English astronomer (1819-92) whose mathematical prediction of the existence of Neptune anticipated Le Verrier's discovery of that planet. Octavo. Unbound. Ten leaves and one blank. Paginated [35]-53. Very good. Five pages of text (35-9), four tables (pp.40-3) and a set of 'Tables containing the corrections to be applied to the values of the moon's equatorial horizontal parallax given in the nautical almanacs 1840-1855, in order to make them agree with those calculated from Mr. Adams' tables.' (pp.46-53). One small closed tear to antepenultimate leaf.

Manuscript headed 'The Informacon of William Rylands Purser of the Neptune galley merchant man' and docketed 'Informacone of William Rylands a Joseph Matthews & John Wyatt'. Signed by Rylands and by Robert Constable of the Middle Temple.

Author: 
Robert Constable; William Rylands; Joseph Matthews; John Wyatt; the galley 'Neptune' [naval and maritime; stuart; sixteenth and seventeenth century; the Inns of Court]
Publication details: 
taken on Oath before me this 17th day of October Anno. Dom 1706.'
£100.00

On one side of a piece of watermarked laid paper roughly 31 x 19 cm. Docketed on reverse. Good, on lightly aged paper, with slight chipping to right-hand edge and short closed tear neatly repaired on reverse with archival tape. The words 'Middle in top left-hand cornerr. Rylands says that the Neptune was 'lying in the Downes' three weeks before, when Matthews and Wyatt, 'being marriners on board', did 'with five other person's Run away with the long boat or yaul belonging to the Said gally'.

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