Chapter 49: 476-483
Page 477
Ensign Cheer
Is this Dixon making a sarcastic remark, implying Mason is being pessimistic or discouraging about his Fire-flies plans?
Page 478
Eyre Coote
Lieutenant-General Sir Eyre Coote, KB (1726 – April 28, 1783), was an Irish soldier who served time in India.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Coote
Page 482
Epsilons usually. Miserable little sort of things. This exchange is a reference to mathematical analysis and the rigorous foundations of the calculus of limits. Typically epsilon denotes an arbitrary positive number which a certain quantity is shown to be smaller than, in order to show that this quantity is in fact zero. This allusion is anachronistic because this idea of a limit first appears only in the writings of Augustin Louis Cauchy in 1821, and was only formally stated by Karl Weierstrass some decades later. Any student of mathematics will no doubt fondly remember having to master the epsilon-delta argument.
