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CAMBRIDGE PAPERS
BY
W.W. ROUSE BALL
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1918
[_All rights reserved_]
PREFACE.
This volume contains papers on some questions of local history put
together, mostly for undergraduate societies and magazines, at various
times during the last twenty-five years. I have included a memoir,
written for a London Society, on Newton's _Principia_, a work that
profoundly affected the development of University studies in the
eighteenth century, and a chapter on the History of the Mathematical
Tripos, which at one time appeared in my _Mathematical Recreations and
Essays_, since these are concerned with Cambridge subjects.
I print the papers, whether long or short, and whether read at length
or, as was more often the case, curtailed in delivery, substantially
in the form in which they were first written. This leaves allusions
which bear evidence to their domestic origin, and involves, in those
of them dealing with cognate subjects, some repetition of facts. If
these are defects they could be removed only by rewriting much of what
appears here; it seems to me preferable to let the essays stand in
their original forms, save occasionally for the addition of a
paragraph or sentence dealing with what has happened since they were
first presented. The dates in the text are reckoned in the modern
style, taking the year as beginning on the first day of January.
W.W. ROUSE BALL.
Trinity College, Cambridge.
_January, 1918._
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface v
=Part I. Concerning Trinity College.=
Chapter I. The Foundation of Trinity College 3