25. A
similar wish was afterward publicly expressed, in 1742, on a monument
erected at the equator by Bouguer, La Condamine, and Godin. On the
beautiful marble tablet which exists, as yet uninjured, in the old Jesuits'
College at Quito, I have myself read the inscription, 'Penduli simplicis
aequinoctialis unius minuti secundi archetypus, mensurae naturalis exemplar,
utinam universalis!' From an observation made by La Condamine, in his
'Journal du Voyage a l'Equateur', 1751, p. 163, regarding parts of the
inscription that were not filled up, and a slight difference between Bonguer
and himself respecting the numbers, I was led to expect that I should find
considerable discrepancies between the marble tablet and the inscription as
it had been described in Paris; but, after a careful comparison, I merely
found two "ex arca graduum plusquam trium," and the date of 1745 instead of
1742. The latter circumstance is singular, because La Condamine returned to
Europe in November, 1744, Bouguer in June of the same year, and Godin had
left South America in July, 1744. The most necessary and useful amendment
to the numbers on this inscription would have been the astronomical
longitude of Quito. (Humboldt, 'Recueil d'Observ. Astron.', t. ii.
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