or **Excentric Circle**, in the ancient Ptolemaic astronomy, was the very orbit of the planet itself, which it supposed to describe about the earth, and which was conceived eccentric with it; called also the deferent.

Instead of these eccentric circles round the earth, the moderns make the planets describe elliptic orbits about the sun; which accounts for all the irregularities of their motions, and their various distances from the earth, &c.

or **Excentric Circle**, in the new astronomy, is the circle described from the centre of the orbit of a planet, with half the greatest axis as a radius; or it is the circle that circumscribes the elliptic orbit of the planet.

**EXCHANGE.** See Encycl. under that word, and likewise under Bills of Exchange, where the antiquity of such bills, especially among the Chinese, is mentioned. In Professor Beckmann's history of inventions the reader will find an ordinance of the year 1394 concerning the acceptance of bills of exchange, and also copies of two bills of the year 1404, which sufficiently prove that the method of transacting business by bills of exchange was fully established in Europe so early as the fourteenth century; and that the present form and terms were even then used. The ordinance, which was issued by the city of Barcelona, decreed that bills of exchange should be accepted within twenty-four hours after they were presented, and that the acceptance should be written on the back of the bill.

But there are questions relating to bills of exchange of much greater importance than their antiquity; and these questions are not yet decided. For instance, ought a bill of exchange to be considered by the law merely as a deposit belonging to the drawer, and successively confided to the remitter? Or should it be considered as transferable property, at all times absolutely vested in the holder, whose neglect therefore, when it vitiates the value, falls wholly on himself?

In a work published in 1798 by Professor Busch of Hanburgh, entitled, *Additions to the Theoretical and Practical Delineation of Commerce* (a), the reader will find some arguments, which, to say the least of them, are certainly plausible, to prove that bills of exchange ought to be at all times considered as the absolute property of the holder. This theory is then applied to the difficult and still unsettled case of the holder of a bill having many indorsements, where the drawer, drawee, and early indorsers, have all failed. It is evident that, if the holder proves under each bankruptcy the whole amount of the bill, he will receive much more than his due. May he make his election where to prove the whole demand, and where to prove the residue? Or ought he not (which seems most equitable) to be compelled to prove his debt against his immediate predecessor only?—the affluence of that predecessor proving, in their turn, in like manner (each party once only), back to the drawer. This is a case of great importance to discounters, and the reader will find some judicious observations on it in the Professor's work.