REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1917. 11 



C. H. F. Peters, gave much attention also in the later years of 

 his life to the work of Ulugh Beg. His notes and comments have 

 been utilized by Knobel, and a valuable vocabulary of Persian 

 Avords prepared by Peters and revised by Knobel is published as 

 an appendix to the work. These new editions of the Almagest 

 and Zij Ulugh Beg show at a glance, to one acquainted with the 

 subject, not onlj^ the relations between the attainments of the 

 Greek school of astronomers and the corresponding attainments 

 of the Arabian school, but in an equally summarj^ and conclusive 

 fashion they show the transcendent superiority of their modern 

 successors over both schools. But while it appears that the 

 Arabians did not make any noteworthy advances either in the 

 theories or in the applications of astronomy, it must be admitted 

 to their great credit that they were the chief conservators of the 

 science between the epoch of Hipparchus and the epoch of Galileo. 



Two other publications of the Institution issued during the 

 year are worthy of special mention here, partly because they 



A Concordance sei've to indicate the activities of the Institution 



to the Poems in widely different fields and partly because they 

 of Keats. gerve, each in its own way, to meet the needs of 

 speciaUsts. They furnish also extreme instances of what may be 

 called humanistic learning and help to disclose the pitfalls which 

 beset one who may attempt, by a priori reasoning, to divide 

 knowledge into technical and non-technical categories, concerning 

 which some observations are made in a later section of this report. 



The first of the works referred to is a concordance to the 

 poems of John Keats, compiled by a zealous company of six 

 editors assisted bj^ no less than twenty-four collaborators. It 

 not infrequently happens that two authors conspire to produce 

 a book, but it is rare that thirty join in such a task. The work 

 is a technical volume of about 450 quarto pages preceded by a 

 carefully prepared introductory chapter drawn up by the leader 

 of these editorial specialists, Professor Leslie Nathan Broughton. 

 It will help to meet the needs of the rapidly growing number of 

 critical scholars whose learmng is required to be ixiinutely special 

 in order than it may be broadly liberal. Such works in litera- 

 ture, like numerical tables and catalogues of stellar positions in 

 astronomy, furnish the data for advances and discoveries of 

 ever increasing definiteness and permanence. 



