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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 3
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
The value of odd volumes (says the B. & C. Printer and Stationer) is more than many think. It happened some few years back that a country bookseller sent up some books for sale to a well-known firm of auctioneers, and among them were three volumes of the « Complutensian Polygot, » edited by Cardinal Ximenes in 1517. Asked his reserve price for these, he said « Five shillings, » but the auctioneer advised him to make it £10, which somewhat opened the bookseller's eyes. Still, these were only three volumes out of six, but the bookseller's feelings may be guessed when the dispersed volumes for which he was ready to take five shillings sold for £59. This, of course, is an extreme instance, but odd volumes of the « Collection of Old Ballads, » 1725, and of Durfey's « Pills to Purge Melancholy » 1716, are by no means to be despised even from a marketable point of view.
The Western Star (Riverton), has an able article on the prophetic business—astrological and Biblical. Referring to Zadkiel's Almanac, it states that for the fifty-eight years of its publication it has been edited by the same man. This is not correct, as the original Zadkiel died some years ago. He was one B. J. Morrison, Commander, r.n., a learned but eccentric gentleman, who was as firm a believer in astrology as any of his readers, and who wrote The New Principia (published in 1868), to prove that the Ptolemaic theory of the universe was after all the true one. He is not to be confounded with those who hold that the earth is a plane; he maintained that it was a rotating sphere, the stationary centre of the solar system. As the book is scarce, we quote some of his results: Mean distance of the Sun, 365,006.5 miles; of Moon, 27,304 miles; rate at which Sun and Moon travel through space, 261.63 miles per hour. Semi-diameters of planetary orbits in miles: Mercury, 137,341; Venus, 259,938; Mars 556,156; Jupiter, 1,899,240; Saturn, 3,422,195.