ON FLAMSTEED'S STAES "OBSERVED, BUT NOT EXISTING." 



83 



Tbe conclusions arrived at in the foregoing discussions are recapitulated in the following 

 tabular form: 



Although the evidence of identity could not be made equally strong for all of the twenty-two 

 cases left unsolved by Baily, nevertheless it is manifest that no reason exists to suppose any of 

 the stars seen by Elamsteed to have been lost, or become extinct in the nearly two hundred years 

 since elapsed. All the stars in the British Catalogue have now been accounted for, as well as the 

 positions permit. 



In concluding I may be allowed a remark, suggested while occupied with examining Flam- 

 steed's observations. The astronomical world has not yet done justice to the sacrificing zeal, the 

 , industry, the honest work of the first Astronomer Eoyal. The star catalogue is still in the same 

 crude state as it came from the hands of the author. Baily has done much in rectifying errors of 

 computation, discarding wrong positions, rectifying others; but still, the British Catalogue of 

 Baily is yet the old Catdlogm Britannicus, the product of an age when the methods of reduction 

 were in their infancy, the elements for the same imperfect, aberration and nutation even not yet 

 discovered. The catalogue does not represent the observations with equivalent accuracy. Already 

 Baily urged strongly a new reduction. "I do not despair," he says, "of its being accomplished 

 at some future time, since those observations have much intrinsic value." But, since these words 

 were uttered, over half a century has elapsed again, and however carefully the 70 volumes of 

 Flamsteed's MSS. may be preserved at Greenwich, with time the paper must molder and the 

 writing become more and more illegible. Baily, Argelander, and Krueger have done valuable 

 preparatory work for a reduction. Has England no young astronomer ambitious to undertake 

 the task? 



