M HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE EDWARD. SIR, As Heaven has inspired our ROYAL HIGHNESS with such a love of ingenious and useful arts, that you not only study their theory, but have often condescended to honour the professors of mechanical and experimental philosophy with your presence and particular favour; I am thereby encouraged to lay myself and the following work at your ROYAL HIGHNESS's feet; and at the same time beg leave to express that veneration with which I am, SIR, Your ROYAL HIGHNESS'S Most obliged, And most obedient, Humble Servant, JAMES FERGUSON PAGE Shewing how to Calculate the mean time of any New or Full Moon, or Eclipse, A SHORT ACCOUNT ОР ТИЕ LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. Written by Himself, and continued by the Editor. AS this is probably the last book I shall ever publish, I beg leave to prefix to it a short account of myself, and of the manner I first began, and have since prosecuted my studies. For, as my setting out in life from a very low station, and in a remote part of the Island, has occasioned some false, and indeed very improbable particulars, to be related of me, I therefore think it the better way instead of contradicting them one by one, to give a faithful and circumstantial detail of my whole proceedings, from my first obscure beginning to the present time; wherein, if I should insert some particulars of little moment, I hope the goodnatured reader will kindly excuse me. I was born in the year 1710, a few miles from Keith, a little village in Bamffshire, in the North of Scotland; and can with pleasure say, that my parents, though poor, were religious and honest; b |