1835.] the Advancement of Science. 227 



Bennie's report contains, I believe, new facts from the manuscripts 

 of his father, and is in other ways a valuable statement, industriously- 

 drawn up, of the recent improvements in the practice of hydraulics, 

 to the theory of which science it is to be lamented that so little has 

 lately been added: and without pretending to judge myself of the 

 merits of the two other reports, I may mention them as compositions 

 which I know to have interested persons, with whose professional 

 and habitual pursuits they have no close connexion, and therefore, as 

 an instance of the accomplishment of one great end proposed by our 

 association, that of drawing together different minds, and exciting 

 intellectual sympathy. The other contents of the volume are accounts 

 of researches undertaken at the request of the association. Notices 

 in answer to queries and recommendations of the same body, and 

 miscellaneous communications. Of these, it is of course impossible 

 to speak now ; your time would not permit it. Yet, perhaps, I ought 

 not to pass over the mention of one particular recommendation which 

 has happened to become the subject of remarks elsewhere — I mean 

 that recommendation which advised an application to the lords 

 of the treasury for a grant of money, to be used in the reduction 

 of certain Greenwich observations, the result of which recommen- 

 dation is noticed in the volume before us. 



' In all that I have hitherto said respecting this Association, I have 

 spoken almost solely of its internal effects, or those which it produces 

 on the minds and acts of its own members. But it is manifest that 

 such a society cannot fail to have also effects which are external, and 

 that its influence must extend even beyond its own wide circle of mem- 

 bers. It not only helps to diffuse through the community at large a 

 respect and interest for the pursuits of scientific men, but ventures even 

 to approach the throne, and to lay before the King the expression of the 

 wishes of this his parliament of science, on every subject of national 

 importance which belongs to science only, and is unconnected with the 

 predominance in the state of any one political party. It was judged 

 that the reduction of the astronomical observations on the sun and 

 moon, and planets, which had been accumulating under the care of 

 Bradley and his successors, at the Royal and National Observatory of 

 Greenwich, since the middle of the last century, which, except so far as 

 foreign astronomers might use them, had lain idle and useless till 

 now, to the great obstruction of the advance of practical as well as 

 theoretical science, was a subject of that national importance, and 

 worthy of such an approach to the highest functionaries of the state. 

 It happened that I was not present when the propriety of making 

 this application was discussed, so that I do not know whether the 

 authority of Bessel was quoted — That authority has not at least been 

 mentioned to my knowledge, in any printed remarks upon the question, 

 but as it bears directly and powerful thereon, you will permit me, 

 perhaps, to occupy a few moments by citing it. Professor Bessel of 

 Koenigsberg, who, for consummate union of theory and practice, 

 must be placed in the very foremost rank, may be placed perhaps at 

 the head of astronomers now living and now working, published not 

 longago that classical and useful volume, the Tabula Re^iomontanap, 

 which I now hold in my hand. In the introduction to this volume 

 of tables, Bessel remarks, that '^ the present knowledge of the solar 



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