Wesley Corpus

1765 LONDON, January 1, 1765. SIR,--If you please to insert in your Magazine my answer to a letter directed to me in November last, you will oblige Your humble servant. SIR,--I am obliged to you for your queries and remarks; and so I shall be to any who will point out anything wherein they think I have been mistaken. It would not be strange if there should be many mistakes in the Compendium of Natural Philosophy, as philosophy is what for many years I have only looked into at leisure hours. Accordingly in the Preface of that treatise I said, 'I am throughly sensible there are many who have more ability as well as leisure for such a work than me; but as none of them undertakes it, I have myself made some little attempt in the following volumes.' Q. 1. 'You say the Sun revolves upon his axis once in twenty-seven hours. Should it not be once in twenty-seven days nearly' Yes, it should. This was an error of the press. Q. 2. 'You say he is supposed to be abundantly larger than the Earth. Is it not demonstrable that he is so' I do not know whether it is or no. Q. 3. 'You tell us the Moon turns always the same side to the Earth. Should it not be nearly the same' Yes. Q. 4. 'You say it does not appear that she moves round her own axis. How, then, do you account for her turning always the same side to the Earth' I think, full as well without the supposition as with it. But I do not undertake to account for anything. Q. 5. 'Why do you say the Moon is supposed to be forty-five times smaller than the Earth when the Moon's bulk is nicely known' It is not known by me, nor, I doubt, by any man else. Q. 6. 'You say Jupiter is supposed to be twenty-five times larger than the Earth, and in the next page that his diameter is supposed to be 130,655 miles. If so, is he not 4,096 times larger than the Earth' Undoubtedly. But I do not undertake to defend either one supposition or the other. Q. 7. 'You inform us that even a good eye seldom sees more than an hundred stars at a time. Do you mean at one look' Yes.