Very long and very severe were the equinoctial gales that year.
The first was an equinoctial, the second a solstitial armilla.
The dispute arose from the designation, in the grant to Penn, of the southern boundary of Pennsylvania mainly as the parallel marking the " beginning of the fortieth degree of Northerne Latitude," after the northern boundary of Maryland had been defined as a line " which lieth under the fortieth degree of north latitude from the equinoctial."
Gunter's Quadrant, an instrument made of wood, brass or other substance, containing a kind of stereographic projection of the sphere on the plane of the equinoctial, the eye being supposed to be placed in one of the poles, so that the tropic, ecliptic, and horizon form the arcs of circles, but the hour circles are other curves, drawn by means of several altitudes of the sun for some particular latitude every year.
Bradley had already perceived, in the case of the two stars previously scrutinized, that the apparent difference of declination from the maximum positions was nearly proportional to the sun's distance from the equinoctial points; and he realized the necessity for more observations before any generalization could be attempted.