Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

THE TRISSOTETRAS. 77
Neverthelesse the reader may be pleased to observe, that no consonants in the figures
or moods are representative save P. and B., and that only in a few ; both these two,
and all the other consonants, merely serving to expresse the order and series of the
moods and figures respectively amongst themselves, and of their constitutive parts in
regard of one another.
ANIMADVERSIONS.
In the letter T. I have been something large in the enumeration of severall radiuses ;
for there being eleven made use of in the grand scheme, whereof eight are circumfer-
entiall and three angularie, that they might be the better distinguished from one an-
other, when falling in proportion we should have occasion to expresse them, I thought
good to allot to every one of them its owne peculiar character : all which I have done
with the more exactnesse, that by the variety of the radiuses amongst themselves,
when any one of them in particular is pitched upon, we may the sooner know what
part of the diagram, by meanes thereof, is fittest for the resolving of any orthogono-
sphericall problem ; though indeed, I must confesse, when sometimes to a question
propounded I adapt a figure apart, I doe indifferently, excluding all other characters,
make use of To, or Had, or It. onely, for the totall sine, which, without any obscu-
rity or confusion at all, I have practised for brevities sake.
Likewise, it being my maine designe in the framing of this table, to make all capable
trigonometrically-affected students with much facility and little labour attaine to the
whole knowledge of the noble science of the doctrine of triangles, I deemed it expe-
dient, the more firmly and readily to imprint the severall datoquaeres or praescinded
problems thereof in their memories, to accommodate them accordingly with letters
proper for the purpose ; which, if the ingenious reader will be pleased to consider, he
will find, by the very letters themselves, the place and number of each datoquaere.
This is the reason why my Trissotetras, conforme to the etymologie of its name, is in
so many divers ternaries and quaternaries divided ; and that the sharp, meane, blunt,
double, and liquid consonants of the Greek alphabet, are so orderly bestowed in their
severall roomes, being all and every one of them seated according to the nature of the
moods and figures whose characteristicks they are.
Thirdly, The moods of the planotriangular table, being in all thirteene, whereof
there be seven rectangular, and six obliquangular, are fitly comprehended by the three
blunt, three meane, three sharp, and foure double consonants, the Hebrew Shin
being accounted for one of them.
Fourthly, The sixteen moods of the orthogonosphericall Trissotetras, are contained
under three sharp, three mean, three blunt, three double, and foure liquids, which
foure doe orderly particularise the binaries of the last two figures.