306 Astronomical Society, 



at the last meeting, and expressing interest in the welfare of the 

 Society. 



The (olio wing communications were read : 



I. Some particulars of the Life of Dr. Halley. Communicated by 

 Professor Rigaud, through Mr. Baily. 



The manuscript memoir, containing the particulars here alluded to, 

 was found in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford j it is a small quarto, and 

 consists of twenty leaves. The author is not known j but it appears 

 that he was of Cambridge University, was acquainted with Halley and 

 Dr. Sykes the orientalist, and wrote before Halley's manuscript ob- 

 servations were out of the hands of his executors. As some of the 

 circumstances therein mentioned are not generally known, the memoir 

 was read as a sort of appendix to the paper communicated at the last 

 meeting of the Society. It appears that it was Dr. Halley's intention, 

 very early in life, to form a new catalogue of stars from actual ob- 

 servation ; but finding that this ground was already occupied by He- 

 velius and Flamsteed, he directed his attention to the southern hemi- 

 sphere ; and under the sanction of His Majesty King Charles II., he 

 was despatched to the island of St. Helena, furnished with the follow- 

 ing instruments : An excellent brass sextant, of 5 J feet radius, well 

 fitted up with telescope-sights, indented semicircles of the same me- 

 tal, and screws for the ready bringing it into any plane j a quadrant of 

 about 2 feet radius, which he intended chiefly for observations where- 

 by to adjust his clock ; a telescope of 24 feet ; some lesser ones j two 

 micrometers ; and a good pendulum-clock. He immediately, on his 

 arrival at St. Helena, set himself to work; and from his observations 

 deduced the catalogue of southern stars that was published in 1679. 

 After some other journeys on the Continent, he returned to England ; 

 and in 1 682 married Mrs. Mary Tooke. Intending now to settle 

 some time at home, he resolved to pursue his astronomical observa- 

 tions, and therefore fixed the sextant which he had at St. Helena in 

 a small observatory which he had fitted up at Islington, where he car- 

 ried on a regular course of observations (of the moon principally) 

 from November 7, 1682, to June 16, 1684, the account of which is 

 published at the end of Street's Astronomia Carolina. When the 

 great recoinage of dipt money was made by King William III., five 

 mints were erected, for that purpose, out of London : and Dr. Hal- 

 ley was appointed comptroller of the mint at Cliester. In the year 

 1698, he was directed by His Majesty to proceed on a voyage for de- 

 termining the law of the variation of the magnetic needle : and in 

 the year 1701 he was instructed to make observations on the tides in 

 the English Channel, and to take the bearings of the different head- 

 lands on the coast. At the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society 

 in November 1713, he was chosen secretary in the room of Sir Hans 

 Sloane, who resigned that office : and on the decease of Mr. Flam- 

 steed, at the close of the year 1719, he was recommended by the 

 P2arl of Macclesfield, then lord chancellor, by the Earl of Sunderland, 

 then secretary of state, and by others, as the fittest person to fill the 

 office of Astronomer Royal ; to which situation he was appointed on 

 Feb. 9, 1719-20, and which he held till the day of his death. 



