The defects of Descartes lie rather in his apparently imperfect apprehension of the principle of movements uniformly accelerated which his contemporary Galileo had illustrated and insisted upon, and in the indistinctness which attaches to his views of the transmission of motion in cases of impact.
Defects in their arguments have been exposed to view by those who are most concerned to defend their reputation.
Daru, in his history of Venice, mentions fourteen between the years 1207 and 1365, the most important being that of 1361-1364, - a revolt not of the natives against the rule of their Venetian masters, but of the Venetian colonists against the republic. But with all its defects their administration did much to promote the material prosperity of the country, and to encourage commerce and industry; and it is probable that the island was more prosperous than at any subsequent time.
His qualities and his defects were alike exhibited on a generous scale; and if his greed and arrogance were colossal, so were his administrative capacity and his appetite for work.
Two supplementary parts were issued in 1835 and 1840 respectively, and the work for many years deservedly maintained the highest position as the authority on European ornithology-indeed in England it may almost without exaggeration be said to have been nearly the only foreign ornithological work known; but, as could only be expected, grave defects are now to be discovered in it.
