BEARING, in Navigation, an arch of the horizon intercepted between the nearest meridian and any distant object, either discovered by the eye and referred to a point on the compass, or resulting from the spherical proportion; as, in the first case, "at four P.M. Cape Spado, in the isle of Candia, bore S. by W. by the compass." In the second, the longitudes and latitudes of any two places being given, and consequently the difference of latitude and longitude between them, the bearing of one from the other is discovered by the following analogy: As the meridional difference of latitude is to the difference of longitude, so is the radius to the tangent of the bearing.