56 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
The committee cited 21 papers published between 1874 and 
1884, and gave a brief summary of each, remarking in con- 
clusion: ‘Professor Langley has published numerous other 
papers upon subjects connected with solar or astral physics, but 
it is believed that those which have now been mentioned will 
fully justify the recommendation of the committee.” 
About 1883 the Academy began the practice of sending 
delegates to other learned societies and to universities, both in 
America and in Europe, and in the minutes of the meeting of 
April of that year we read that on recommendation of the 
Council it was voted “ that the Secretary be directed to acknowl- 
edge, with thanks, the invitation extended to the Academy by 
the Royal Society of Canada to send delegates to the meeting to 
be held at Ottawa, May 22, 1883, and the President be author- 
ized to appoint delegates to attend the said meeting.” Dr. T. 
Sterry Hunt was appointed delegate on this occasion. 
In 1887, Professor C. H. F. Peters, of Hamilton College, was 
appointed, at the request of the Académie des Sciences, Paris, 
to represent the Academy at an international conference held in 
Paris on April 16 of that year to consider a plan for making a 
chart of the heavens by photography. At this important con- 
gress, which extended from April 16 to 25, 1887, fifty-six 
astronomers, representing sixteen different nationalities, were 
present. The objects to be attained and the methods to be em- 
ployed were set forth in the following resolutions, passed at the 
first session of the congress: 
“1, The progress made in astronomical photography demands that the astron- 
omers of our time undertake in common the description of the heavens by astro- 
photographical means. 
“2. This work is to be done at stations to be selected, with instruments that, 
in their essential points, ought to be identical. 
“3. The aim is (a) to make a general photographical chart of the heavens 
for the present epoch, and to obtain the data which shall permit fixing the posi- 
tions and the magnitudes of all the stars down to a certain class with the greatest 
possible precision; (b) to provide the best means for utilizing, for the present 
epoch as well as for the future, the data furnished by the photographical 
process.” °® 
* Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1887, p. 49. 
