He had already assisted Nathaniel Bowditch in his translation of the Mecanique celeste, and now produced a series of mathematical textbooks characterized by the brevity and terseness which made his teaching unattractive to inapt pupils.
If we accept the - Persian derivation of the term (which is advanced by Curzon as being perhaps the most plausible), pai-mir, or "the foot of mountain peaks," we have a definition which is by no means an inapt illustration of the actual facts of configuration.