its members such men as Swale, Whitley, Ryley ("Sam"), Gawthorp, Settle,
and John Baines. This, too, was in a district in many respects very
analogous to Lancashire, but especially in the one to which the argument
more immediately relates:--it was a district of weavers, only substituting
wool for cotton, as cotton had in the other case been substituted for the
silk of Spitalfields.

We see nothing like this in the agricultural districts; neither do we in
those districts where the ordinary manufacturing operations themselves
require the employment of the head as well as the hands and feet. With the
exception, indeed, of the schoolmaster, and the exciseman, and the
surveyor, there are comparatively few instances of persons whose employment
was not strictly sedentary having devoted their intellectual energies to
mathematics, independent of early cultivation. To them the subject was more
or less professional, and their devotion to it was to be expected--indeed
far more than has been realised. It is professional now to a larger and
more varied class of men, and of course there is a stronger body of
non-academic mathematicians now than at any former period. At the same time
it may be doubted whether there be even as many really able men devoted to
science purely and for its own sake in this country as there were a century
ago, when science wore a more humble guise.

Combining what is here said with the masterly analysis which MR. WILKINSON
has given of the books which were accessible to these men, it appears that
we shall be able to form a correct view on the subject of the Lancashire
geometers. Of course documentary evidence would be desirable--it would
certainly be interesting too.

To such of your readers as have not seen the mathematical periodicals of
that period, the materials for which were furnished by these men, it may be