Note 27 — LAPLACE.

It must be admitted that M. Arago has here imperfectly represented Newton's labours on the great problem of the precession of the equinoxes. The immortal author of the Principia did not merely conjecture that the conical motion of the earth's axis is due to the disturbing action of the sun and moon upon the matter accumulated around the earth's equator: he demonstrated by a very beautiful and satisfactory process that the movement must necessarily arise from that cause; and although the means of investigation, in his time, were inadequate to a rigorous computation of the quantitative effect, still, his researches on the subject have been always regarded as affording one of the most striking proofs of sagacity which is to be found in all his works.—Translator.