5. Pierres’ printing of The Definitive Treaty between Great Britain, and the United States of America, Signed at Paris, the 3d day of September 1783, was not issued until c. Sept. 27. The title page is reproduced as the frontispiece to this volume, but the publication itself will be discussed in vol. 41. See also Luther S. Livingston, Franklin and His Press at Passy (New York, 1914), pp. 188–90.

6. BF had evidently ordered Pierres’ recent edition of Etienne Bézout’s popular Cours de mathématiques à l’usage des gardes du pavillon et de la marine, which consisted of five parts. The first four, listed here, were reprinted by Pierres in 1781–82: “Elémens d’arithmétique,” “Elémens de géométrie …,” “L’algèbre …,” and “Principes généraux de la méchanique. …” The fifth part, “Traité de navigation,” did not appear until 1784.

Bézout (XXIV, 142; XXXIII, 49n) died on Sept. 27, 1783. BF’s set of these volumes has not been located, but his copy of Bézout’s Théorie générale des équations algébriques (Paris, 1779) is at the APS: Wolf and Hayes, Library of Benjamin Franklin, p. 128.