Annual Report of the Council. 185 



the origin of the Babylonian or Arrow-headed character," 

 in 1842 [Vol. IV., 2nd series]; "On the structure 

 of the luminous envelope of the sun," in 1861 [Vol. I., 

 3rd series]; "On the planet Mars," in 1863 [Vol. II., 3rd 

 series]; and "On War Rockets," in 1868 [Vol. IV, 3rd 

 series]. His models of Lunar Craters, prepared in plaster 

 from his own telescopic observations, photographed and 

 engraved, are still the finest illustrations of the moon's 

 surface. 



The Society has this year to deplore the loss in the 

 same month of the two most distinguished English 

 Astronomers of the age. George Biddell Airy was 

 born at Alnwick on July 27th, 1801, and graduated at 

 Cambridge as Senior Wrangler in 1823. Although he 

 partially maintained himself already as an undergraduate 

 by giving private lessons, his scientific work was begun 

 before he took his degree, and he was appointed Lucasian 

 Professor of Mathematics in 1826, and transferred to the 

 Plumian Professorship of Astronomy in 1828. In a limited 

 space it is impossible to give an adequate account of Airy's 

 accomplishments, but it must not pass without notice that 

 he was the first in England to treat astronomy as a high 

 branch of science, and to enforce its practice in this sense 

 in the Observatory at Cambridge. In his report on the 

 progress of astronomy for the British Association in 1832, 

 he says :— " In those parts of astronomy, requiring only 

 method and judgment, with very little science in the 

 persons employed, we have done much. . . . Our 

 principal progress has been made in the lowest parts of 

 astronomy, while to the higher branches of the science we 

 have not added anything. ... An observer conceives 

 he has done everything when he has made an observation." 

 In this Airy made a radical change, both at Cambridge and 

 afterwards at Greenwich, when he became Astronomer 



