feb Royal Astronomical Society. 



may be referred to floating ice. Smooth rounded blocks of smaller 

 dimensions, especially when spread out with other detrital matter in 

 layers of considerable horizontal extent, the author would refer to 

 the action of aqueous currents. .dy \ i 



ii) odw 



'fi lo -umisxK 



ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY. ;ilt oj b'JIff 



[Continued from vol. xxvi. p. 361.] .it.pJii/A a 



February 14, 1845. — Extracts from the Report of the Council of ^he 

 Astronomical Society to the Annual General Meeting. 



To her Majesty's Government we have to express our obligations 

 for printing in our Memoirs, at the public expense, the late Professor 

 Henderson's right ascensions of principal fixed stars, deduced from 

 observations made at the Cape of Good Hope in 1832 and 1833. It 

 has been a fixed rule with the Council not to print in the Memoirs 

 the official transactions of public observatories ; and they are happy 

 to say that administrations of all parties, and also the Directors of 

 the East India Company, have always recognised the reasonableness 

 of this rule, the instant the grounds on which it was made were 

 brought before them. 



The Council have received from Mr, Baily's executors the manu- 

 script details of the Cavendish experiment. 



In the month of March last, Dr. Lee requested that the Society 

 Avould accept the perpetual advowson of the Vicarage of Stone, near 

 Hartvvell. The grant is now enrolled according to the statute. This 

 is the second gift of an advowson from Dr. Lee, to whom the Society 

 is under many other obligations, and who has shown an incessant 

 interest in its welfare, not only by munificent contributions to its 

 funds, its library, and its collection of instruments, but by active 

 personal services extending over many years. 



Among the losses by death, your Council have to regret Captain 

 Basil Hall, Professor Henderson, and Mr. J. Frodsham. 



Memoir o/ Professor Henderson. 



At none of its former anniversary meetings has this Society had 

 cause to deplore heavier losses than those it has sustained in the 

 past year. The death of its pi'esident, Mr. Baily, was followed, at 

 a short interval, by that of Professor Henderson of Edinburgh ; an 

 astronomer of first-rate merit, and one who, for many years, has 

 been conspicuously distinguished among us by the frequency and 

 importance of his contributions to our publications. His services 

 to the cause for which we are associated have been, indeed, of no 

 ordinary kind ; and, although prematurely terminated, have entitled 

 him to a high place among the most deserving of our members. It 

 becomes, therefore, a duty we owe to his memory to recapitulate 

 in this Report his principal claims to our gratitude, and to ])lace on 

 record a few particulars of his personal history ; as M^ell to testify 

 our respect for his eminent merits, as to gratify, however imperfectly, 

 the desire which will be felt to know something of the life and cha- 



