If our Queries on this subject be productive of no other result than that
of eliciting the able and judicious analysis subsequently given by MR.
WILKINSON (Vol. ii., p. 57.), they will have been of no ordinary utility.
The silent early progress of any strong, moral, social, or intellectual
phenomenon amongst a large mass of people, is always difficult to trace:
for it is not thought worthy of record at the time, and before it becomes
so distinctly marked as to attract attention, even tradition has for the
most part died away. It then becomes a work of great difficulty, from the
few scattered indications in print (the books themselves being often so
rare[1] that "money will not purchase them"), with perhaps here and there a
stray letter, or a metamorphosed tradition, to offer even a probable
account of the circumstances. It requires not only an intimate knowledge of
the subject-matter which forms the groundwork of the inquiry, both in its
antecedent and cotemporary states, and likewise in its most improved state
at the present time; it also requires an analytical mind of no ordinary
powers, to separate the necessary from the probable; and these again from
the irrelevant and merely collateral.

MR. WILKINSON has shown himself to possess so many of the qualities
_essential_ to the historian of mathematical science, that we trust he will
continue his valuable researches in this direction still further.

It cannot be doubted that MR. WILKINSON has traced with singular acumen the
manner in which the _spirit_ of geometrical research was diffused amongst
the operative classes, and the class immediately above them--the exciseman
and the country schoolmaster. Still it is not to be inferred, that even
these classes did not contain a considerable number of able geometers
anterior to the period embraced in his discussion. The Mathematical Society
of Spitalfields existed more than half a century before the Oldham Society
was formed. The sameness of pursuit, combined with the sameness of