1. There is a curiously simple and compact formula

which may be used to derive from a, a first approximation to the nth root a number R, a second approximation b, very much closer to the true value Applications of this formula when n has the value 3 are the purpose of the note.

To a reader of the Gazette the formula is possibly not new. It is not to found, so far as I can ascertain, in any treatise or textbook, and has remained unknown; but in 1929 the Gazette (Vol. XIV., p. 308) printed in a footnote statement made by Reuben Burrow in the preface to his Theory of Gunnell (1779) that a rule for extracting cube root (equivalent to (ii) below) was “for more exact and expeditious” than the common method. Three years late this “gleaning” inspired Mr. G. W. Ward to send two contributions to Vol XVII. (pp. 52 and 127). In the first he showed that the order of the error b was the cube of that in a; and in the second, by an improvement upto Newton’s method of approximation, he obtained the explicit value of b give by (i) for any value of n, anticipating the present paper by ten years. I have thank Mr. T. A. A. Broadbent for drawing my attention to these facts and dates.