146 Boyal Society. 



in which that important duty was discharged by him, or of the prin- 

 ciples which guided himself and his distinguished assessors, in the se- 

 lection either of subjects or of the authors ; but a list which is headed 

 by the name of Whewell and closed by that of Buckland, can hardly 

 be considered as an unworthy representation of the science and lite- 

 rature of this country. 



Amongst the losses sustained by the Society during the last year, 

 will be found many names of persons distinguished for their services 

 both in literature and in science ; and if we might be allowed to form 

 a judgement from the very great proportion of these eminent men 

 whose ages have approached the extreme limits of human life, we 

 might conclude with great confidence that the most severe studies 

 and the most trying climates, if pursued with temperance or guarded 

 against with care, are not unfavourable either to health or longe- 

 Tity. The list which has been placed in my hands contains the names 

 of twenty-one Fellows and two Foreign Members, and I greatly re- 

 gret that the notice which I am enabled to take of some of the most 

 distinguished of their number should be necessarily so slight and im- 

 perfect. 



Mr. Pond succeeded Dr. Maskelyne as Astronomer Royal in 1810, 

 and retired from that important situation, under the pressure of many 

 infirmities, in the autumn of last year : he was formerly a member of 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a pupil of Professor Lax, 

 whose name appears also in the list of deaths which has been just 

 read to you. After leaving the University, he travelled in many 

 parts of the East, and particularly in Egypt, partly urged by the 

 spirit of adventure which is natural to youth and partly with a view 

 of making astronomical observations in climates more pure and more 

 regular than our own. After his return home in 1800, he settled at 

 Westbury, in Somersetshire, and devoted himself, amidst other pur- 

 suits, chiefly to astronomy, making use of a circular instrument of 2J 

 feet diameter, which had been constructed and divided by Troughton 

 with more than ordinary care. With this instrument he observed 

 by a peculiar method, the declinations of some of the principal fixed 

 stars, which were communicated to the Royal Society in 1806 ; and 

 it afterwards enabled him to establish the fact of a change of form 

 in the great quadrants at Greenwich, a discovery of great importance, 

 inasmuch as it not only led to the substitution of circular instru- 

 ments for them in our national observatory, but subsequently like- 

 wise to his own appointment as Astronomer Royal. 



After Mr. Pond's establishment at Greenwich, he communicated 

 to the Royal Society from time to time, not merely the general re- 

 sults of his labours, but likewise his views of the theory of astrono- 

 mical observations and of the grounds of judging of their relative 

 accuracy : his system was to observe differences of declination and 

 right ascension, making every star a point of departure for the rest, 

 and considering the pole as a point in the heavens whose position 

 was capable of a determination, equally, and not more accurate than 

 that of any given star. To such a view of the theory of observation, 

 circular instruments were particularly adapted, and there is no reason 



