Second Report of the British Association. 461 



leave the present state of the heavens also in obscurity, our own observations 

 have too generally been cast on the world unreduced, with a hope, I sup- 

 pose, that others would have the zeal to reduce them. The observations 

 that require only moderate instruments, with patience and zeal on the part 

 of the observer, as the discovery and observation of comets, and the obser- 

 vation of the small planets, (which on the Continent have generally been 

 made with unmounted telescopes,) have been little attended to. Of the lat- 

 ter, some observations by Mr. Groombridge, some at Greenwich, and a few 

 by myself, constitute, I believe, the whole amount. 



" I will not deny that there are some exceptions to my general assertion, 

 and in one of these my hearers will anticipate me. I think that I can fix on 

 only two discoveries, the results of combined theory and observation, which 

 are original in the present century, and one of these belongs to an English- 

 man. New planets and periodical comets had been discovered in the last 

 century ; abstract theory of every kind and observations of almost every kind 

 had been produced : but the existence of a resisting medium was established 

 in this century by Encke, and the practical prediction of the phases of dou- 

 ble stars is due to Sir John Herschel. Nor can I omit to mention Sir Thomas 

 Brisbane and Mr. Baily, and (for several investigations connected with the 

 physics of Astronomy,) Mr. Ivory, and lately Mr. Lubbock. But after every 

 credit has been given to their labours, it will, I believe, be allowed that the 

 part in which England has contributed most to Astronomy, and ivhich is 

 likely to be mentioned with greatest gratitude by future historians of the 

 science, is that in which she has contributed as a nation. 



" In proof of the justice of my second assertion, the following remarks 

 may be sufficient. Our instruments I conceive (though a German would not 

 allow it,) to be superior to those of any other nation. The observations at 

 our observatories are conducted, I imagine, with greater regularity and 

 greater steadiness of plan than those of foreign observatories. This, indeed, 

 is the character which gave (in some respects) preeminent value to the 

 Greenwich observations of last century, and which makes those of the pre- 

 sent century highly valuable. In the reduction of these observations we 

 begin to fall off. Though Dr. Brinkley has investigated from observations 

 a new Table of refractions, and applied it to his own observations, yet Brad- 

 ley's Table, known twenty years since to be sensibly erroneous, is still the 

 standing Table of refractions at Greenwich. The discussion of the reduced 

 observations has been, I think, confined absolutely to the proper motion of 

 stars. On one or two occasions a number of observations of the moon have 

 (by order of the Board of Longitude,) been compared with the then existing 

 Tables, but not with a view of improving the Tables. I hav*e had occasion 

 to mention the correction of the elements of the earth's orbit made by myself 

 (from Greenwich observations), and the discovery, in consequence, of a 

 new equation in the perturbations of the Earth and Venus. As far as I have 

 been able to ascertain, this was the first improvement in the solar Tables 

 made by an Englishman since the time of Halley, and the first addition to 

 the solar theory since the time of Newton. From English observations of 

 planets it has been impossible to extract a result, because scarcely any have 

 been made. To show the extent of this deficiency, I will mention a morti- 

 fying circumstance that has occurred to myself. In order to verify com- 

 pletely the equation above alluded to, I was desirous of collecting observa- 

 tions of Venus near her inferior conjunction. In examining the Greenwich 

 observations I found that no opportunity of making this observation was 

 omitted by Bradley or his immediate successor Bliss ; soon after the acces- 

 sion of Maskelyne it was wholly neglected ; and from that time till several 

 years after his death scarcely an observation is to be found : several con- 

 junctions have been passed over by the present Astronomer Royal; five 



