386 Astronomical Society. 



solstices of 1823, were communicated by Sir Thomas Brisbane to 

 this Society, in a letter to our late worthy president, together with a 

 considerably extensive series of observations of principal stars, chiefly 

 those visible in both hemispheres, and which have undergone a care- 

 ful reduction and close scrutiny in the hands of Dr. Brinkley, the 

 details of which, as well as the original observations, are printed in 

 the first part of the second volume of the Transactions of this Society, 

 and which justify, in the eyes of that experienced observer, as they 

 must in those of every practical astronomer, a decided opinion of the 

 great care and skill with which they have been made. 



A great number of occasional observations, — such as eclipses, oc- 

 cultations, and observations of the planets Venus and Uranus, near 

 their conjunctions and oppositions, and of comets from the same 

 source, — are also printed in the same volume. One of the most re- 

 markable single results we owe to the establishment of Sir Thomas 

 Brisbane's observatory, consists in the re-discovery of the comet of 

 Encke in its predicted place, on the 2H June 1822. The history of 

 this extraordinary body is well known to all who hear me ; and as its 

 re-discovery at Paramatta by Mr. Rumker, has already been, on a 

 former occasion, distinctly noticed and rewarded by this Society, 

 there is no occasion that I should here enlarge on it ; and yet I can- 

 not help pausing a moment to figure the delight its celebrated dis- 

 coverer must have experienced, to find the calculations, on whose 

 exactness he had pledged himself, thus verified beyond the gaze of 

 European eyes ; and this strange visitant gliding, as if anxious to 

 elude pursuit, into its primitive obscurity, thus arrested on the very 

 eve of its escape, and held up to mankind, — a trophy at once of the 

 eertainty of our theories, and the progress of our civilization. 



Observations of the length of the pendulum were not neglected 

 by Sir Thomas Brisbane ; and the determination of this important 

 element at Paramatta, forms the subject of a highly interesting and 

 valuable communication made by him to the Royal Society, and 

 printed by them in their Transactions for 1823, and discussed by 

 Captain Kater with his usual care and exactness. 



The remainder, and indeed the great mass of the observations 

 made with the mural circle and the transit instrument, have at dif- 

 ferent periods been communicated to the Royal Society, and are for 

 the present deposited in its archives. Forming our judgement only 

 upon those of which an account has been publicly read at the meet- 

 ings of that illustrious body, but which are understood to constitute 

 only a comparatively small part of the whole, — they form one of the 

 most interesting and important series which has ever been made, 

 and must ever be regarded as marking a decided aera in the history 

 of Southern Astronomy. 



It is for this long catalogue of observations — whether scattered 

 through the journals of Europe, printed in our own Transactions, or 

 deposited as a precious charge in the care of a body so capable of 

 appreciating their merits ; but still more for the noble and disinter- 

 ested example set by him in the establishment of an observatory on 

 such a scale, in so distant a station, and which would have equally 



merited 



