258 Lieutenant R. Strachey on the 



or to the grounds taken by the Council in the award, if I 

 were to conclude what I have to say otherwise than in the 

 pointed and emphatic words of a report officially embodying 

 the prominent features of the case. " The simple facts," says 

 that document, " are, that Mr Lassell cast his own mirror, 

 polished it by machinery of his own contrivance, mounted it 

 equatorially in his own fashion, and placed it in an observa- 

 tory of his own engineering : that with this instrument he 

 discovered the satellite of Neptune, the eighth satellite of 

 Saturn, and re-observed the satellites of Uranus. A private 

 man, of no large means, in a bad climate" (nothing, I under- 

 stand, can be much worse), " and with little leisure, he has 

 anticipated, or rivalled, by the work of his own hands, the 

 contrivance of his own brain and the outlay of his own pocket, 

 the magnificent refractors with which the Emperor of Russia, 

 and the citizens of Boston, have endowed the observatories 

 of Polkowa and the Western Cambridge." 



The President then, delivering the medal to Mr Lassell, 

 addressed him in the following terms : — 



And now, Mr Lassell, all that remains for me is to 

 place the medal in your hands, and to congratulate you on 

 your success and on the noble prospect of future discovery 

 which lies before you, now that, free from the preliminary 

 labour of construction, your whole attention can be devoted 

 to using the powerful means you have created. In the exa- 

 mination of the nebulae, in the measurement of the closest 

 double stars, and the discovery of others which have hitherto 

 defied separation — in the physical examination of the planets 

 and comets of our own system, there is a wide field open, 

 and the sure promise of an ample harvest ; and I can only 

 add, that we all heartily w^ish you health and long life to 

 reap it. 



On the Motion of the Glacier of the Pindur in Kumaon. By 

 Lieutenant R. Strachey, Engineers. 



In No. 181 (August 1847) of the Asiatic Society's Jour- 

 nal, I gave an account of the glacier at the head of the Pindur 



