Description | Present at the meeting: the President in the chair.
The following had leave to be present; Mr Sherwin by Mr Cavendish The Baron de Prawn and Sir Christopher Meighan by Dr Morton
' A certificate recommending John Anthony Helvetius of Amsterdam, Doctor of Laws, to be elected, London 17 June 1762, and signed Matthew MAty, Charles Morton, And H Van Haemstede, was read, and ordered to be put up in the publick meeting room. '
Communications; 1. The President read a paper entitled "Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope, reduced to apparent time" and signed Charles Mason 2. Read a message from the Reverend Mr Maskelyne FRS where he 'had, the day before, retirned his thanks to the Directors of the East India Company for the favours and a sustenance in his observations, which their orders had procured him at St Helena, and on board their ships" and also "notified to them the great benefit likely to arise in navigation, by introducing the method of finding the longitude at Sea, by observations of the Moon; which he had found to be ceertain, and practicable to Sailers in general, under a due degree of attention and had communicated his method of computation to the Royal Society and would soon publish it at large". 3. Mr Maskeyne communicated that by 'equal attitudes of the Sun, taken at St Helena, January 29, and 30, and February 5th and 7th of this year; the Society's clock gained regularly 6.25 seconds, up on sidereal time, in 24 hours: that he had made a mark up on the rod of the pendulum, even with the top of the bob, the index pointing to No 3 upon the regulating nut; by which means it would be easy to adjust the pendulum to the same length here.' 4. Read part of a paper by Mr Maskelyne entitled "Observations of the distance of the Moon from the Sun and fixed Stars, in order to determine the longitude." Remainder referred to the next meeting. 5. Read letter to the Reverend Dr Birch FRS dated Walbroke on 20 June 1762 and signed Alexander Russel, with a paper enclosed, concerning a description of a singular marine production from the river of St Lawrence; with two elelgant drawings of the productions. [Account described in detail in minutes] 6. Read a dissertation "An Enquiry into the cause of heat in bituminous waters" by Sir Christopher Meighan Knight and referred to Dr Hadley FRS to give an account of it.
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