ADDRESS. XXXIX 



or made at the request of the Association ; that they should not be granted 

 for the general promotion of this or that branch of science, but for specific 

 and well-defined objects; that in no case should they be applied to make a 

 bookselling or other speculation remunerative, which would otherwise not 

 be so ; that the results of ipquiries which are carried on partly or wholly at 

 our charge, should so far belong to the Association as to secure its just claim 

 to the scientific credit which they are calculated to confer. I know that some 

 of these principles have been in some instances partially departed from, under 

 very pressing and peculiar circumstances ; but the remembrance of the dis- 

 cussions to which some claims of this nature have given rise, which it was im- 

 proper to grant, but difficult and painful to refuse, has tended to confirm my 

 own impression not merely of the wisdom of those important rules, but likewise 

 of the almost imperative necessity of adhering to them. 



It was at the memorable meeting of the Association at Newcastle, a period 

 of great financial prosperity, that it was resolved to recommend and to under- 

 take a very extensive system of astronomical reductions and catalogues: the 

 first was the republication, under a greatly extended and much more com- 

 plete form, of the Astronomical Society's Catalogue, exhibiting the latest and 

 most accurate results of astronomical observations, reduced to a common 

 epoch, with the permanent coefficients for their reduction which the Nautical 

 Almanac does not supply. The second was the reduction of all the stars in 

 the ' Histoire Celeste ' of Lalande, nearly 47,000 in number, containing the 

 most complete record which existed sixty years ago of the results of obser- 

 vation, and affording therefore an interval of time so considerable as to en- 

 able astronomers, by comparing them with their positions as assigned by 

 modern observations, to determine their pi'oper motions and other minute 

 changes, almost independently of the errors of observation: a third was a simi- 

 lar reduction of the stars in the * Coelum Stelliferum Australe' of Lalande, 

 8700 in number, which had assumed an unusual degree of importance from 

 the recently completed survey of the southern hemisphere by Sir John Her- 

 schel, and the establishment of observatories at Paramatta and the Cape. 



Another work of still greater expense and labour, was the reduction and 

 publication of the Planetary and Lunar Observations at Greenwich, from the 

 time of Bradley downwards, which was undertaken by the Government at the 

 earnest application of a Committee of the Association, appointed for that 

 purpose and acting in conjunction with the Council of the Royal Society: this 

 great undertaking has been nearly brought to a conclusion under the systema- 

 tic and vigilant superintendence of the Astronomer Royal. 



The publication of these works must form a great epoch in astronomy ; 

 and though the expense to which it has exposed the Association has been very 

 considerable, and will amount when completed to nearly £3000, yet it cannot 

 fail to prove a durable monument of the salutary influence which it has exer- 

 cised upon the progress of science. The catalogues of Lacaille and Lalande 

 are to be printed and j)ublished, as is already known to you, at the expense 

 of Her Majesty's Government, and the first, which has been prepared un- 

 der the superintendence of Professor Henderson, is nearly complete: the 

 catalogue of Lalande and the British Association Catalogue were placed 

 under the superintendence of Mr. Francis Eaily, and in referring to the irre- 

 parable loss whicli astronomical science has so recently sustained by his death, 

 I should neither do justice to my own feehngs nor to his long and important 

 connection with the Association if I did not detain you for a few moments. 



Mr. Baily was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable men of his time; 

 it was only in 18^5 that he retired from the Stock Exchange with an ample 



