xlviii ° REPORT—1857. 
grown up from youth to maturity; many of its honoured names are now — 
sought for only in the imperishable records of their toils; the institutions 
which welcomed it here upon its former visit to this city have all received 
the impress of the changing times. And yet, amid all this change, we meet 
once more in the same city,—in the same room,—to enter again on the same 
labours ; our assemblage is now, as it was before, dignified by the presence 
of the Representative of Majesty ; and I see around me, associated for this 
task, many of those who shared it before ;—the men whose sagacity first per- 
ceived the want of such a Society as this, whose energy supplied it, and 
whose wisdom directed its steps while it had need of guidance. 
I trust I may be forgiven for dwelling thus far on the peculiar circum- 
stances under which we are here assembled ; and I now hasten to discharge 
the task which the usages of this Chair impose upon me, and proceed to lay 
before you, as well as I am able, a brief sketch of the recent progress of some 
of those Sciences to whose advancement we are pledged by our institution. 
In doing so, I gladly follow the practice which has of late become the rule, 
namely, that your President for each year should bring under your notice 
chiefly, the recent additions to those departments of Science with which he 
happens to be himself most familiar. It is plainly fitting that he who addresses 
you should speak, as far as he can, from his own acquired knowledge. Partial 
views are better than inexact ones; and provision is made for their comple- 
tion in the annual change of your Officer. In the present instance I derive 
the full advantage of this arrangement, inasmuch as the subjects upon 
which I could not thus speak have been, most of them, ably treated by my 
predecessor in this Chair. 
To commence, then, with Astronomy :—The career of planetary discovery, 
which began in the first years of the present century, and was resumed in 
1845, has since continued with unabated ardour. Since 1846 not a single 
year has passed without some one or more additions to the number of the 
planetoids; and in one year alone (1852), no fewer than eight of these 
bodies were discovered. ‘The last year has furnished its quota of five ; and in 
the present three more have been found, one by Mr. Pogson of Oxford, and 
the other two by M. Goldschmidt of Paris. Their known number is now 
forty-five. Their total mass, however, is very small; the diameter of the 
largest being less than forty miles, while that of the smallest, Atalanta, is — 
little more than four. 
These discoveries have been facilitated by star-maps and star-catalogues, 
the formation of which they have, on the other hand, stimulated. Two very 
extensive works of this kind are now in progress,—the Star-catalogue of M. 
Chacornac, made at the Observatory of Marseilles, in course of publication — 
by the French Government, and that of Mr. Cooper, made at his Observa+ 
tory at Markree, in Ireland, which is now being published by the help of the © 
parliamentary grant of the Royal Society. It is a remarkable result of the 
