not stand for election until there should be a second place to give to Poisson.  I answered by a formal refusal, and giving my reasons in these terms:  “I care little to be nominated at this moment.  I have decided upon leaving shortly with M. de Humboldt for Thibet.  In those savage regions the title of member of the Institute will not smooth the difficulties which we shall have to encounter.  But I would not be guilty of any rudeness towards the Academy.  If they were to receive the declaration for which I am asked, would not the savans who compose this illustrious body have a right to say to me:  ’How are you certain that we have thought of you?  You refuse what has not yet been offered to you.’”

On seeing my firm resolution not to lend myself to the inconsiderate course which he had advised me to follow, M. de Laplace went to work in another way; he maintained that I had not sufficient distinction for admission into the Academy.  I do not pretend that, at the age of three-and-twenty, my scientific attainments were very considerable, if estimated in an absolute manner; but when I judged by comparison, I regained courage, especially on considering that the three last years of my life had been consecrated to the measurement of an arc of the meridian in a foreign country; that they were passed amid the storms of the war with Spain; often enough in dungeons, or, what was yet worse, in the mountains of Kabylia, and at Algiers, at that time a very dangerous residence.

Here is, therefore, my statement of accounts for that epoch.  I make it over to the impartial appreciation of the reader.

On leaving the Polytechnic School, I had made, in conjunction with M. Biot, an extensive and very minute research on the determination of the coefficient of the tables of atmospheric refraction.

We had also measured the refraction of different gases, which, up to that time, had not been attempted.

A determination, more exact than had been previously obtained, of the relation of the weight of air to the weight of mercury, had furnished a direct value of the coefficient of the barometrical formula which served for the calculation of the heights.

I had contributed, in a regular and very assiduous manner, during nearly two years, to the observations which were made day and night with the transit telescope and with the mural quadrant at the Paris Observatory.

I had undertaken, in conjunction with M. Bouvard, the observations relating to the verification of the laws of the moon’s libration.  All the calculations were prepared; it only remained for me to put the numbers into the formulae, when I was, by order of the Bureau of Longitude, obliged to leave Paris for Spain.  I had observed various comets, and calculated their orbits.  I had, in concert with M. Bouvard, calculated, according to Laplace’s formula, the table of refraction which has been published in the Recueil des Tables of the Bureau of Longitude, and in the Connaissance des Temps.  A research on the velocity of light, made with a prism placed before the object end of the telescope of the mural circle, had proved that the same tables of refraction might serve for the sun and all the stars.