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St James's Place - William Stratford agrees with JWL in thinking it desirable to print the comparison of the London and [Rothine or St. Catherine] docks. JWL would like WW to view the tidal gage and clock at these docks. If the Royal Society decide to print his paper on the development of R, JWL would like to make some additions to enable him to take in the terms dependent on the inclination and also to extend his table to include terms not wanted in the lunar theory: 'This method of developing R is a very great and undisputed improvement in my Lunar Theory on account of the great facility with which in this the coefficients of r dR/dr are obtained from those of the coefficients of R...the new method diminishes the labour prodigiously and I could now do by its means in one day what took me weeks to get through. Besides the operations are so simple that the probability of error is almost annihilated' ['On the Theory of the Moon, and on the Perturbations of the Planets', 1833].

WW is perhaps aware that Mr Stratford [William Stratford] has been campaigning to get appointed to the office of superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, and is supported by Capt. Beaufort [Francis Beaufort]. Beaufort did not think that JWL should even consider the job. In response JWL wrote to him to assure him that he did 'you could hardly suppose that I should have felt objection to become the successor of such men as Dr. Maskelyne Dr. Young and Mr Pond'. However he learnt last night that Stratford was appointed to the post: 'he has not the mathematical knowledge of a second year man at Cambridge'. Beaufort has given JWL access to all the Admiralty Charts.