COTES, Roger (1682-1716), an English mathematician and philosopher, born at Burbage, Leicestershire, of which place his father was rector. When only twenty-four years of age he was appointed Plumian professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy in the university of Cambridge. He took orders in 1713; and the same year, at the request of Dr Bentley, he published the second edition of Newton’s Principia with an original preface. He died June 5, 1716, at the age of thirty-three, leaving unfinished a series of elaborate researches on optics, in reference to which Newton observed, “If Mr Cotes had lived, we should have known something.” With regard to pure mathematics, the principal discovery of Cotes consists in a theorem which still bears his name, and which furnishes the means of integrating by logarithms and arcs of the circle the rational fractions whose denominator is a binomial. His papers were collected and published by his successor Dr Robert Smith.

CÔTES-DU-NORD, a maritime department of the north-west of France, formed from the northern part of the province of Brittany, is bounded on the N. by the English Channel, on the E. by the department of Ille-et-Vilaine, on the S. by Morbihan, and on the W. by Finistère, and is situated between 48° 3' and 48° 57' N. lat. To the north the country is flat, but to the south it is rugged and undulating. A chain of granitic hills, the Monts du Menez, runs east to west through the department, dividing it into two unequal parts, of which the southern is the smaller....