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to say what could not otherwise have been said, that mathematicians owe a lasting debt of gratitude to Prof. Tait for the singleness of purpose and the self-denying zeal with which he has worked out the designs of his friend Sir Wm. Hamilton, preferring always the claims of the science and of its founder to the assertion of his own power and originality in its development. For my own part I must confess that my knowledge of Quaternions is due exclusively to him. The first work of Sir Wm. Hamilton, Lectures on Quaternions, was very dimly and imperfectly understood by me and I dare say by others, until Prof. Tait published his papers on the subject in the Messenger of Mathematics. Then, and not till then, did the science in all its simplicity develope itself to me. Subsequently Prof. Tait has published a work of great value and originality, An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions.

The literature of the subject is completed in all but what relates to its physical applications, when I mention in addition Hamilton's second great work, Elements of Quaternions, a posthumous work so far as publication is concerned, but one of which the sheets had been corrected by the author, and which bears all the impress of his genius. But it is far from elementary, whatever its title may seem to imply; nor is the work of Prof. Tait altogether free from difficulties. Hamilton and Tait write for mathematicians, and they do well, but the time has come when it behoves some one to write for those who desire to become mathematicians. Friends and pupils have urged me to undertake this duty, and after consultation with Prof. Tait, who from

being my pupil in youth is my teacher in riper years, I have, in conjunction with him, and drawing unreservedly from his writings, endeavoured in the first nine chapters of this treatise to illustrate and enforce the principles of this beautiful science. The last chapter, which may be regarded as an introduction to the application of Quaternions to the region beyond that of pure geometry, is due to Prof. Tait alone. Sir W. Hamilton, on nearly the last completed page of his last work, indicated Prof. Tait as eminently fitted to carry on happily and usefully the applications, mathematical and physical, of Quaternions, and as likely to become in the science one of the chief successors of its inventor. With how great justice, the reader of this chapter and of Prof. Tait's other writings on the subject will judge.

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH,

October, 1873.

PHILIP KELLAND.

Equation of the ellipsoid, 56; tangent plane and perpendicular

on it, 57, 58; polar plane, 59, 60; conjugate diameters and diame-
tral planes, with examples, 60-64; the cone, 65, 66; examples on
central surfaces, 67; Pascal's hexagram, 68

ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES TO CHAPTER VIII.

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