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&c. denotes the relation of two things similar to each other.

SIMONY, is the corrupt presentation of any one to an ecclesiastical benefice, for money, gift, reward, or benefit. It was not an offence punishable criminally at the common law, it being thought sufficient to leave the clerk to ecclesiastical censures. But as these did not affect the simoniacal patron, none were efficacious enough to repel the notorious practice of the thing. Several acts of parlia ment have, therefore, been made to restrain it, by means of civil forfeitures, which the modern prevailing usage with regard to spiritual preferments call aloud to put in execution.

By one of the canons of 1603, every person, before his admission to any ecclesiastical promotion, shall, before the ordinary, take an oath, that he hath made no simoniacal contract, promise, or pay ment, directly or indirectly, by himself or any other, for the obtaining of the said promotion; and that he will not afterwards perform or satisfy any such kind of payment, contract, or promise, by any other, without his knowledge or

consent.

To purchase a presentation, the living being actually vacant, is open and notorious simony; this being expressly in the face of the statute. But the sale of an advowson during a vacancy is not within the statute of simony, as the sale of the next presentation is; but it is void by the common law.

A bond of resignation is a bond given by the person intended to be presented to a benefice, with condition to resign the same; and is special or general. The condition of a special one is, to resign the benefice in favour of some certain person, as a son, kinsman, or friend of the patron, when he shall be capable of taking the same. By a general bond, the incumbent is bound to resign on the request of the patron. A bond, with condition to resign within three months after being requested, to the intent that the patron might present his son when he should be capable, was held good; and the judgment was affirmed in the exchequer chamber: for that a man may, without any colour of simony, bind himself for good reasons; as, if he take a second benefice, or if he be non-resident, or that the patron present his son, to resign; but if the condition had been to let the patron have a lease of the glebe or tithes, or to pay a sum of money, it had been simoniacal.

SIMOOM. A wind or haze was observed by Mr. Bruce, in the course of his travels to discover the sources of the Nile, which is supposed to be in some respects analogous to the sirocco. It is called by him the simoom, and from its effects upon the lungs, we can entertain but little doubt, that it consists chiefly of carbonic acid gas in a very dense state, and perhaps mixed with some other noxious exhalations.

Mr. Bruce, who, in his journey through the desert, felt the effects of the simoom, gives of it the following graphical description: “At eleven o'clock, while we contemplated with great pleasure the rugged top of Chiggre, to which we were fast approaching, and where we were to solace ourselves with plenty of good water, Idris, our guide, cried out, with a loud voice, fall upon your faces, for here is the simoom. I saw from the south-east a haze coming, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly; for 1 scarce could turn to fall upon the ground with my head to the northward, when I felt the heat of its current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground as if dead, till Idris told us it was blown over. The meteor or purple haze which I saw was indeed passed; but the light air that still blew was of heat to threaten suffocation. For my part, I found distinctly in my breast that I had imbibed a part of it, nor was I free from an asthmatic sensation till I had been some months in Italy, at the baths of Poretta, near two years afterwards." Though the severity of this blast seems to have passed over them almost instaneously, it continued to blow so as to exhaust them till twenty minutes before five in the afternoon, lasting through all its stages very nearly six hours, and leaving them in a state of the utmost despondency.

SIMPLE, something not mixed or compounded, in which sense it stands opposed to compound.

SIMPLE, in pharmacy, a general name given to all herbs or plants, as having each its particular virtue, whereby it becomes a simple remedy.

SIMPLE Contract, in law, debts by simple contract are such, where the contract upon which the obligation arises is neither ascertained by matter of record, nor yet by special deed or instrument,

but by mere oral evidence, or by notes unsealed; whereas debts by specialty are such, whereby the contract is ascertained by deed or instrument, under seal. Simple contract debts are to be paid by executors after debts by specialty.

SIMPSON, (THOMAS,) in biography, professor of mathematics at the Royal Academy at Woolwich, fellow of the Royal Society, and member of the Royal Academy, at Stockholm, was born at Market Bosworth, in Leicestershire, in 1710. His father, a stuff-weaver, taught him only to read English, and brought him up to his own business; but meeting with a scientific pedlar, who also practised fortune-telling, young Simpson, by his assistance and advice, left off weaving, and professed astrology. As he improved in knowledge, however, he grew disgusted with his pretended art, and renouncing it, was driven to such difficulties for the subsistence of his family, that he came up to London, where he worked as a weaver, and taught mathematics at his spare hours. As his scholars increased, his abilities became better known, and he published his Treatise on Fluxions, by subscription, in 1737; in 1740, he published his Treatise on the Nature and Laws of Chance; and Essay in Speculative and Mixed Mathematics. After these appeared his Doctrine of Annuities and Reversions; Mathematical Dissertations; Treatise on Algebra; Elements of Geometry; Trigonometry, Plane and Spherical; Select Exercise; and his Doctrine and Application of Fluxions, which he professes to be rather a new work, than a second edition of his former publication on fluxions. In 1743, he obtained the mathematical professorship at Woolwich Academy; and soon after was chosen a member of the Royal Society, when the president and council, in consideration of his moderate circumstances, were pleased to excuse his admission-fees, and his giving bonds for the settled future payments. At the Academy he exerted all his abilities in instructing the pupils who were the immediate objects of his duty, as well as others whom the superior officers of the ordnance permitted to be boarded and lodged in his house. In his manner of teaching he had a peculiar and happy address, a certain dignity and perspicuity, tempered with such a degree of mildness, as engaged the attention, esteem, and friendship of his scholars. He therefore acquired great applause from his superiors in the discharge of his duty.

Mr. Simpson's Miscellaneous Tracts,

printed in 4to, 1757, were his last legacy to the public: a most valuable bequest, whether we consider the dignity and importance of the subjects, or his sublime and accurate manner of treating them.

The first of these papers is concerned in determining the precession of the Equinox, and the different motions of the Earth's Axis, arising from the Attraction of the Sun and Moon. It was drawn up about the year 1752, in consequence of another on the same subject, by M. de Sylvabelle, a French gentleman. Though this gentleman had gone through one part of the subject with success and perspicuity, and his conclusions were perfectly conformable to Dr. Bradley's observations, it nevertheless appeared to Mr. Simpson that he had greatly failed in a very material part, and that indeed the only very difficult one; that is, in the determination of the momentary alteration of the position of the Earth's axis, caused by the forces of the Sun and Moon; of which forces, the quantities, but not the effects, are truly investigated. The second paper contains the Investigation of a very exact Method or Rule for finding the Flace of a Planet in its Orbit, from a correction of Bishop Ward's circular Hypothesis, by means of certain Equations applied to the Motion about the upper Focus of the Ellipse. By this method the result, even in the orbit of Mercury, may be found within a second of the truth, and that without repeating the operation. The third shows the Manner of transferring the Motion of a Comet from a parabolic Orbit to an elliptic one; being of great use, when the observed places of a (new) comet are found to differ sensibly from those computed on the Hypothesis of a parabolic orbit. The fourth is an attempt to show, from Mathematical Principles, the Advantage arising from taking the Mean of a Number of Observations, in practical Astronomy; wherein the odds, that the result in this way is more exact than from one single observation, is evinced, and the utility of the method in practice clearly made appear. The fifth contains the Determination of certain Fluents, and the Resolution of some very useful Equations in the higher Orders of Fluxions, by means of the measures of angles and ratios, and the right and versed sines of circular arcs. The sixth treats of the Resolution of algebraical Equations, by the Method of Surd divisors; in which the grounds of that method, as laid down

by Sir Isaac Newton, are investigated and explained. The seventh exhibits the Investigation of a general Rule for the Resolution of Isoperimetrical Problems of all Orders, with some examples of the use and application of the said rule. The eighth, or last part, comprehends the Resolution of some general and very important Problems in Mechanics and Physical Astronomy; in which, among other things, the principal parts of the third and ninth sections of the first book of Newton's Principia are demonstrated in a new and concise manner. But what may perhaps best recommend this excellent tract is, the application of the general equations, thus derived, to the determination of the lunar orbit.

According to what Mr. Simpson had intimated at the conclusion of his Doctrine of Fluxions, the greatest part of this arduous undertaking was drawn up in the year 1750. About that time M. Clairaut, a very eminent mathematician of the French Academy, had started an objec. tion against Newton's general law of gravitation. This was a motive to induce Mr. Simpson (among some others) to endea vour to discover whether the motion of the Moon's apogee, on which that objection had its whole weight and foundation, could not be truly accounted for, without supposing a change in the received law of gravitation, from the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances. The success answered his hopes, and induced him to look further into other parts of the theory of the Moon's motion than he at first intended; but before he had completed his design, M. Clairaut arrived in England, and made Mr. Simpson a visit; from whom he learned, that he had a little before printed a piece on that subject, a copy of which Mr. Simpson afterwards received as a present, and found in it the same things demonstrated, to which he himself had directed his enquiry, besides several others.

The facility of the method Mr. Simpson fell upon, and the extensiveness of it, will in some measure appear from this, that it not only determines the motion of the apogee in the same manner, and with the same ease as the other equations, but utterly excludes all those dangerous kinds of terms that had embarrassed the greatest mathematicians, and would after a great number of revolutions, entirely change the figure of the Moon's orbit. From whence this important consequence is derived, that the Moon's mean motion and the greatest quantities of the several

equations, will remain unchanged, unless disturbed by the intervention of some foreign or accidental cause. These tracts are inscribed to the Earl of Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society.

Mr. Simpson's extreme application in this difficult pursuit greatly injured his health. Exercise and a proper regimen were prescribed to him, but to little purpose; for his spirits sunk gradually, till he became incapable of performing his duty, or even of reading the letters of his friends. The effects of this decay of nature were greatly increased by vexation of mind, owing to the haughty and insulting behaviour of his superior, the first professor of mathematics. This person, greatly his inferior in mathematical accomplishments, did what he could to make his situation uneasy, and even to depreciate him in the public opinion; but it was a vain endeavour, and only served to injure himself. At length his physicians advised his native air for his recovery, and he set out in February, 1761; but was so fatigued by his journey, that, upon his arrival at Bosworth, he betook himself to his chamber, and grew continually worse till the day of his death, which happened on the 14th of May, in the 51st year of his age.

SIMSON (DR. ROBERT), in biography, professor of mathematics in the University of Glasgow, was born in the year 1687, of a respectable family, which had held a small estate in the county of Lanark for some generations. He was, we think, the second son of the family. A younger brother was professor of medicine in the University of St. Andrews, and is known by some works of reputation, particularly "A Dissertation on the Nervous System," occasioned by the dissection of a brain completely ossified.

Dr. Simson was educated in the University of Glasgow, under the eye of some of his relations who were professors. Eager after knowledge, he made great progress in all his studies: and as his mind did not, at the very first openings of science, strike into that path which afterwards so strongly attracted him, and in which he proceeded so far almost without a companion, he acquired in every walk of science a stock of information which, though it had never been much augmented afterwards, would have done credit to a professional man in any of his studies. He became, at a very early period, an adept in the philosophy and theology of the schools, was able to supply the place of

a sick relation in the class of oriental languages, was noted for historical knowledge, and one of the most knowing bota

nists of his time. As a relief to other studies, he turned his attention to mathematics. Perspicuity and elegance he thought were more attainable, and more discernible in pure geometry, than in any other branch of the science. To this therefore he chiefly devoted himself; for the same reason he preferred the ancient method of studying pure geometry. He considered algebraic analysis as little better than a kind of mechanical knack, in which we proceed without ideas, and obtain a result without meaning, and with out being conscious of any process of reasoning, and therefore without any conviction of its truth. Such was the ground of the strong bias of Dr. Simson's mind to the analysis of the ancient geometers It increased as he advanced, and his veneration for the ancient geometry was carried to a degree of idolatry. His chief la bours were exerted in efforts to restore the works of the ancient geometers. The inventions of fluxions and logarithms attracted the notice of Dr. Simson, but he has contented himself with demonstrating their truth on the genuine principles of ancient geometry.

About the age of twenty-five, Dr. Simson was chosen Regius Professor of Mathematics in the university of Glasgow. He went to London immediately after his appointment, and there formed an acquaintance with the most eminent men of that bright era of British science. Among these he always mentioned Captain Halley (the celebrated Dr. Edmund Halley) with particular respect; saying, that he had the most acute penetration, and the most just taste in that science, of any man he had ever known. And, indeed, Dr. Halley has strongly exemplified both of these in his divination of the work of "Appollonius de Sectione Spatii," and the eighth book of his "Conics," and in some of the most beautiful theorems of Sir Isaac Newton's "Principia." Dr. Simson also admired the wide and masterly steps which Newton was accustomed to take in his investigations, and his manner of substituting geometrical figures for the quantities which are observed in the phenomena of nature. It was from Dr. Simson that his biographer, to whom we are indebted for this article, learnt, "That the thirty-ninth proposition of the first book of the Principia was the most important proposition that had ever been exhibited to the physico-mathematical philosopher; and he used always to illustrate to his more ad.

vanced scholars the superiority of the geometrical over the algebraic analysis, by comparing the solution given by Newton of the inverse problem of centripetal forces, in the 42d proposition of that book, with the one given by John Bernoulli in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences at Paris for 1713. He had heard him say, that to his own knowledge Newton frequently investigated his propositions in the symbolical way, and that it was owing chiefly to Dr. Halley that they did not finally appear in that dress. But if Dr. Simson was well informed, we think it a great argument in favour of the symbolic analysis, when this most successful practical artist (for so we must call Newton when engaged in a task of discovery) found it conducive either to dispatch, or perhaps to his very progress Returning to his academical chair, Dr. Simson discharged the duties of a professor for more than fifty years, with great honour to the university and to himself. It is almost needless to say, that in his prelections he followed strictly the Euclidian method in elementary geometry. He made use of Theodosius as an introduction to spheri cal trigonometry. In the higher geometry, he lectured from his own Conics; and he gave a small specimen of the li near problems of the ancients, by explaining the properties, sometimes of the conchoid, sometimes of the cissoid, with their application to the solution of such problems. In the more advanced class, he was accustomed to give Napier's mode of conceiving logarithms, i. e. quantities as generated by motion; and Mr. Cotes's view of them, as the sums of ratiunculæ ; and to demonstrate Newton's lemmas concerning the limits of ratios; and then to give the elements of the fluctionary calculus; and to finish his course with a select set of propositions in optics, gnomonics, and central forces. His method of teaching was simple and perspicuous, his elocution clear, and his manner easy and impressive. He had the respect, and still more, the affection, of his scholars.

It was chiefly owing to the celebrated Halley, that Dr. Simson so early directed his efforts to the restoration of the ancient geometers. He had recommended this to him, as the most certain way for him, at that time very young, both to acquire reputation, and to improve his own knowledge and taste, and he presented him with a copy of Pappus's Mathematical Collections, enriched with his own notes. Hence he undertook the restoration of Euclid's porisms, a work of such difficul

ty, that his biographer says nothing but success could justify in so young an adventurer. From this he proceeded to other works of importance, which he executed with so much skill, as to obtain the reputation of being one of the most elegant geometers of the age. His edition of Euclid's "Elements" has long been reckoned the very best that exists. Another work, on which Dr. Simson bestowed much labour, was the "Sectio determinata," which was published after his death, by the late Earl Stanhope, with the great work, "The Porisms of Euclid." This nobleman had kept up a correspondence with Dr. Simson till his death, in 1768, when he engaged Mr. Clow, to whose care the Doctor had left his papers, to make a selection of such as would serve to support and increase his reputation, as the restorer of ancient geometry. This selection Lord Stanhope printed at his own expense.

"The life of a literary man rarely teems with anecdote; and a mathematician, devoted to his studies, is perhaps more abstracted than any other person from the ordinary occurrences of life, and even the ordinary topics of conversation. Dr. Simson was of this class; and having never married, lived entirely a college life. Having no occasion for the commodious house to which his place in the university entitled him, he contented himself with chambers, good indeed, and spacious enough for his sober accommodation, and for receiving his choice collection of mathematical writers, but without any decoration or commodious furniture. His official servant sufficed for valet, footman, and chambermaid. As this retirement was entirely devoted to study, he entertained no company in his chambers, but in a neighbouring house, where his apartment was sacred to him and his guests. Having in early life devoted himself to the restoration of the works of the ancient geometers, he studied them with unremitting attention; and retiring from the promiscuous intercourse of the world, he contented himself with a small society of intimate friends, with whom he could lay aside every restraint of ceremony or reserve, and indulge in all the innocent frivolities of life. Every Friday evening was spent in a party at whist, in which he excelled, and took delight in instructing others, till increasing years made him less patient with the dulness of a scholar. The card-party was followed by an hour or two dedicated solely to playful conversation. In like manner, every Satur

day he had a less select party to dinner

The

at a house about a mile from town. Doctor's long life gave him occasion to see the dramatis persone of this little theatre several times completely changed, while he continued to give it a personal identity; so that, without any design or wish of his own, it became, as it were, his own house and his own family, and went by his name. Dr. Simson was of an advantageous stature, with a fine countenance; and even in his old age had a graceful carriage and manner, and always, except when in mourning, dressed in white cloth. He was of a cheerful disposition; and though he did not make the first advances to acquaintance, had the most affable manner, and strangers were at perfect ease in his company. He enjoyed a long course of uninterrupted health, but towards the close of life suffered from an acute disease, and was obliged to employ an assistant in his professional labours for a few years preceding his death, which happened in 1768, at the age of eighty-one. He left to the university his valuable library, which is now arranged apart from the rest of the books, and the public use of it is limited by particular rules. It is considered as the most choice collection of mathematical books and manuscripts in the kingdom, and many of them are rendered doubly valuable by Dr. Simson's notes." For a more particular account of the life and writings of this great man, the reader is referred to the article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. xvii.

SINAPIS, in botany, mustard, or charlock, a genus of the Tetradynamia Siliquosa class and order. Natural order of Siliquosæ or Cruciformes. Cruciferæ, Jussieu.

Essential character: calyx spreading; corolla claws erect; gland between the shorter stamens and pistil, and between the longer stamens and calyx. There are nineteen species.

SINE, or right SINE of an arch, in trigonometry, is a right line drawn from one end of that arch, perpendicular to the radius drawn to the other end of the arch; being always equal to half the chord of twice the arch. See TRIGONOMETRY.

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