XXXVHli REPORT—1849. 
To him you are as an oasis to the travellers in the Desert, whose palms and 
fountains make him forget the waste which he has left, and store him for 
another journey with the means of life. But we not only give this impulse, 
we also guide it; and by guiding it, sustain and increase its strength, as well 
as by removing the difficulties which resist it, A small part of what we 
have thus accomplished you find in the volumes which we have published ; 
the most important, as I already stated, is to be found in the Transactions of 
various Societies or in separate works. Let me select a few instances, for 
rapid notice, as time will fail for more, To begin with the science to which 
I myself am specially devoted—Astronomy: it has been above all others 
patronized by nations and individuals; in our own country a Society of high 
fame and influence has been established for its advancement ; and yet it has 
remained for us to render it services of no common order, which I may be 
permitted to explain in some detail. {n it, as in many other physical sciences, 
the observation of facts is merely the crude ore, which must be sorted, and 
sifted and passed through the furnace to make it yield the metal which we 
seek. The mere task of making the observations is generally a pleasure ; 
but it is far otherwise with the subsequent process. ‘The arithmetical opera- 
tions whjch it requires, demand much more time and involve much more 
labour ; that, too, rather intellectual, and involving at every step liabilities 
to error. Take a simple instance: you have determined with minute pre- 
cision the apparent place of a star in the sky—if you stop then, you have 
done nothing. The place you have obtained is not the true one; the atmo- 
sphere has bent the line of sight ; while the light travels down your telescope 
you and it have been moving ; and the sky-marks by which you map the star 
are themselves disturbed by various and complicated motions. For all these 
you must allow; but to do so requires, on gn average, even in the most im=- 
proved method of modern times, the writing of 400 figures and the perform- 
ance of 50 arithmetical operations. But the numbers themselves employed 
are the result of other complicated operations ; nearly half are constant for 
the same star, but an equal number have relation to the sun and moon, and 
therefore vary from day to day. Were these also to be calculated, it would 
add an equal amount of work. But even this is insufficient, for we must 
compare what we thus obtain with the results of former astronomers; and 
this also cannot be done without bringing them together by the same arith- 
metic talisman ; so that were the whole to be performed by the one calcu- 
lator, I have found that, however expert he may be, he must expend an hour 
at least in obtaining each result. Now, from most of this drudgery in the 
case of more than 8000 stars, he is relieved by the Catalogue which the 
Association has given to the world, It contains for each the constants already 
