Part iv

--'the whiche ferthe partie in special shal shewen a _table of the verray moeving of the mone from houre to houre_, every day and in every signe, after thyn almenak; _upon which table ther folwith a canon_, suffisant to teche as wel the _maner of the wyrking of that same conclusioun_, as to knowe in oure orizonte with which degree of the zodiac that the mone ariseth in any latitude; and the arising of any planete after his latitude fro the ecliptik lyne.' The opening words of the same Conclusion are--'Knowe by thyn almenak the degree of the ecliptik of any signe in which that the planete is rekned for to be:' (p. 221). This is easily said; but I suppose that it was not so easy in olden times to know off-hand the exact position of a planet. It must have been shewn by tables, and these tables chiefly considered the 'mene mote,' or average motion of the planets, and that only for periods of years. If you wanted the position of a planet at a given hour on a given day, you had to work it out by figures; the rule for which working was called a 'canon.' This very 'canon' is precisely given at length in sect. 44; and sect. 45 is only another way of doing the same thing, or, in other words, is an alternative canon. When all this is fairly and sufficiently considered, we shall find good grounds for supposing that these sections on the 'mene mote' are perfectly genuine, and that they really belong to Part iv . of the Treatise.

I will only add, that the fact of sections 41_a_-42_b_ being thus placed after a portion of Part iv . is one more indication that they are spurious.

§ 23. CONCLUSION 40. But it may be objected, as Mr. Brae has fairly objected, that Conclusion 40 itself ought to belong to