Memoir of the late Francis Baily, Esq.^ F.R.S., ^c. 63 



further destruction, the links which connect us with them ; to 

 ascertain all that has really been recorded of the stars, and to 

 make that totahty of knowledge the common property of astro- 

 nomers — a precious and a pious labour, of which we have 

 no examples, except in that spirit of loyal reverence which 

 prompted Ptolemy to secure from oblivion the observations 

 of Hipparchus, and make them the foundation of all future 

 astronomy ; and in that which animated Bessel, when on the 

 basis of Bradley's observations he may be said to have afforded 

 the means of reconstructing the whole fabric of the science. 



The catalogues which Mr. Baily has re-edited are those of 

 Ptolemy, Ulugh Beigh, Tycho Brahe, Halley, Hevelius, 

 Flamsteed, Lacaille and Mayer ; a mass of commentation, ex- 

 purgation and minute inquiry, before which the most stout- 

 hearted might quail, since there is not one of them in which 

 each individual star has not been made the subject of a most 

 scrupulous and searching examination, and in which errors 

 that had escaped all prior detection, — errors of reading, errors 

 of entry, of copying, of calculation, of printing, out of num- 

 ber, — have not been detected and corrected. But for these 

 labours, the catalogues of Ptolemy and Ulugh, indeed, must 

 have remained sealed books to any but professed antiquaries; 

 and although we can now hardly ever have occasion to appeal 

 to these earliest authorities for any practical purpose, we can- 

 not but look on the labour thus cheerfully bestowed in em- 

 balming and consecrating their venerable relics as the sure 

 pledge that our own works, if really worthy, will not be suf- 

 fered to perish by time and neglect. 



But while we admire both the diligence and the scrupulous 

 exactness, of which the notes appended to these catalogues 

 bear ample evidence, we must not omit to mention that there 

 are two of them, those of Mayer and Flamsteed, in respect of 

 which Mr. Baily's researches have been pushed far beyond 

 the mere duties of comparison and comment, having been ex- 

 tended to the conservation and minute examination of the ori- 

 ginal records from which the catalogues were formed. In the 

 case of Mayer, his influence with the late Board of Longitude 

 secured the publication of the original observations of that 

 eminent astronomer at Gottingen, which had never before 

 seen the light*. In the case of Flamsteed, his labours were 

 much more extensive and require a more particular statement, 

 inasmuch as not only Flamsteed's greatest work, the ' British 

 Catalogue,' found in him its restorer to that high rank, as an 

 astronomical document, which it is justly entitled to hold, but 



* In 1826. 



