142 Royal Astronomical Society. 



astronomical use. It may be proper, in expressing the grounds of this 

 adjudication, to allude to the extensive nature and elevated character 

 of that extraordinary work, as well as to the peculiar incidents con- 

 nected with its production, which have brought it within the recog- 

 nition of your Council. 



It is, of course, understood, and has always been acted upon, that 

 work, however excellent and useful, does not enter into competition 

 when it only follows the necessary duty of the author. Our medal 

 was primarily instituted as a mark of approbation on individual ex- 

 ertion, on labours of love ; and not to note our sense of the official 

 merits of public men, or of the rectitude and ability with which they 

 may acquit themselves in their respective offices. Now the weighty 

 reductions in question come before us as executed, at the expense of 

 her Majesty's Government, by the Astronomer Royal. It remains, 

 however, to be added, that the undertaking was proposed by that 

 distinguished individual long before his appointment to Green wich. 

 After his attention had been particularly called to the planetary 

 theory, by his taking charge of the Cambridge Observatory, — having 

 already investigated the errors of the Solar Tables and the long in- 

 equality due to Venus, — he saw the immediate necessity of a com- 

 plete computation of all the older exact observations, which is nearly 

 equivalent to saying of those made at Greenwich since the erection 

 of the new transit instrument by Bradley in September 1750, and 

 no others. The importance of this object does not seem to have 

 struck the authorities on Mr. Airy's first proposal ; but after the 

 British Association was formed, a deputation of that body waited 

 upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1833, and obtained his 

 consent to defray the necessary expenses. Mr. Airy's offer was, that 

 if the Government would meet the cost of reduction and printing, 

 he would undertake the entire preparation and supervision of the 

 work gratuitously ; so that he undeniably has the merit of origina- 

 ting, pressing, carrying the proposal into successful operation, and 

 bringing it to a most satisfactory conclusion, almost solely and ex- 

 clusively, and without any pecuniary advantage or official call. The 

 publication of the Reductions was ordered by the Lords Commis- 

 sioners of the Admiralty, in consequence of a recommendation made 

 to them by the Board of Visitors of the Royal Observatory of Green- 

 wich, on the 25th of June, 1841. 



This is the real origin of the reductions, and we find displayed in 

 the execution of the task qualities of a higher order than that mere 

 zealous and patient perseverance so often consumed in the mecha- 

 nical department of computation. For raised as he was by his own 

 talents and application to an almost unrivalled height over the field 

 of astronomy, Mr. Airy was not only able to take in at one view the 

 actual existing state of the science, but could also look back and 

 trace all the wanderings of former inquirers, each proceeding in his 

 own narrow foot-path according to his own peculiar views of the 

 various constants of refraction, nutation, aberration, and other ele- 

 ments of reduction. Through this wilderness he cut a broad high- 

 way, connecting all those separate labours, and making each of them 



