Memoir of the late Francis Baily, Esq.^ F.R.S., Sfc. 69 



favourable circumstances at Jedburgh, noticed a very singular 

 phsenomenon attending the formation of the annulus. I mean 

 the appearance of beads of light, alternating finally with long, 

 straight, dark threads, cutting across the narrow line of the 

 sun's limb, which he described in a highly interesting paper 

 read to this Society on the 9th of December, 1836. On the 

 occasion of the total eclipse he selected Pavia for his station, 

 that town lying in the path of the centre of the shadow. 

 There, by especial good fortune, he obtained an excellent 

 view of it, and there he witnessed, not only a repetition of the 

 phaenomenon of the beads, but that much more astonishing 

 and previously unheard-of one, of the flame-like, or conical 

 rose-coloured protuberances, seen to project, as it were, from 

 the hidden disc of the sun beyond the border of the moon. 

 This truly wonderful appearance (which was corroborated by 

 several other observers at different places, among others by 

 Mr. Airy at Turin) was described by him, on his return from 

 Italy, in a paper read to this Society on the 1 1th Nov. 1842 ; 

 and it is not a little singular that the two most remarkable 

 solar eclipses on record should thus have furnished the sub- 

 jects of his first and last astronomical memoirs, — 



" Servatur ad imum 

 Qualis ab incepto processerit." 



On his return from this journey he resumed his astronomical 

 labours on the catalogues, as we have seen, which he continued, 

 as well as his usual unremitted attendance to the business and 

 at the meetings of this Society, till the spring of the present 

 year, when his health began to decline, and several weeks of 

 serious illness, a thing utterly unknown to him at any former 

 period of his life (except as a result of accident), gave intima- 

 tion of a failing constitution. For the first time since the reor- 

 ganization of the visitation of the Royal Observatory he was 

 unable to attend the annual meeting of theVisitors in June. He, 

 however, rallied somewhat, so as to be able to be present at the 

 commemoration at Oxford on July 2, on which occasion the 

 honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law was conferred on 

 him by that university, as well as on Mr. Airy and Professor 

 Struve. On his return from Oxford his health again rapidly 

 declined, and all efforts of medical skill proving unavailing to 

 relieve an internal complaint, which had at length declared 

 itself, he expired, after a protracted, but happily not painful 

 illness, during which he was fully sensible of his approaching 

 end, in a state of the utmost calmness and composure, at half- 

 past nine o'clock in the evening of the 30th of August, at the 

 age of seventy years and four months. 



In passing in review, as I have attempted to do, the scien- 



