In a 1746 letter to the keeper of Cambridge's Woodwardian Museum, Dunthorne wrote: "After I had compared a good Number of modern Observations made in different Situations of the Moon and of her Orbit in respect of the Sun, with the Newtonian Theory . . . I proceeded to examine the mean Motion of the Moon, of her Apogee, and Nodes, to see whether they were well represented by the Tables for any considerable Number of Years . . . "