ADDRESS. 



xU 



tliey lead, which forms a recent volume of the Memoirs of the Astronomical 

 Society, will be a durable monument to his patience, perseverance and skill. 



He published, at the request of the Admiralty, the Correspondence and 

 Catalogue of Flamsteed, with a most laborious examination and verilication 

 of all his authorities. He presented to the Astronomical Society a volume 

 containing the catalogues of Ptolemy, Ulugh Beigh, Tycho Brahe, and Heve- 

 lius and Halley, with learned prefaces and critical notes, showing their rela- 

 tions to each other, and to later catalogues. His preface and introduction 

 to the British Association Catalogue, and more than one third of the catalogue 

 itself, are already printed, and from the critical examination of the autliorities 

 upon which his assumed positions rest, and the careful distribution of the stars 

 which are selected, (more than 8000 in number) in those parts of the heavens 

 where they are likely to be most useful to observers as points of comparison, 

 it promises to be the most important contribution to the science of practical 

 astronomy which has been made in later times. The whole of the stars of the 

 ' Histoire Celeste ' are reduced and a considerable portion (more than one-fifth) 

 printed, but it is not known whether the introductory matter, which from him 

 would have been so valuable, was prepared at the time of his death. 



Mr. Baily was the author of the best Treatise on Life Annuities and In- 

 surances which has yet appeared, as well as of several other publications on 

 the same subject ; his knowledge of the mathematicians of the English School 

 was very sound and complete, though he had never mastered the more re- 

 fined resources of modern analysis. His conception of mechanical principles 

 and of their bearing upon his experimental researches, was singularly clear 

 and definite, and though in the prosecution of the Cavendish and other ex- 

 periments, he freely availed himself of the assistance of the Astronomer Royal 

 and of Mr. De Morgan, in the investigation of formulae, which required the 

 aid of dynamical or other principles which were somewhat beyond the reach 

 of the mathematics of the school with which he was familiar, yet he always 

 applied them in a manner which showed that he thoroughly understood their 

 principle, and was fully able to incorporate them with his own researches. 



In the midst of these various labours (and the list which I have given of 

 them, ample as it is, comprehends but a small part of their number), Mr. Baily 

 never seemed to be particularly busy or occupied ; he entered freely into so- 

 ciety, entertaining his scientific as well as his mercantile friends at his own 

 house with great hospitality. He was rarely absent from the numerous scien- 

 tific meetings of Committees and Councils (and he was a member of all of 

 them), which usually absorb so large a portion of the disposable leisure of 

 men of science in London ; but if a work or inquiry was referred to him, it 

 was generally completed in a time which would have been hardly sufBcient 

 for other men to make the preliminary investigations. Much of this was un- 

 doubtedly owing to his admirable habits of system and order ; to his always 

 doing one thing at one time ; to his clear and precise estimate of the extent of 

 his own powers. Though he always wrote clearly and well, he never wrote am- 

 bitiously ; and though he almost always accomplished what he undertook, he 

 never affected to execute, or to appear to execute, what was beyond his powers. 

 This was the true secret of his great success, and of his wonderful fertility, and 

 it would be difficult to refer to a more instructive example of what may be 

 effected by practical good sense, systematic order, and steady perseverance. 



It was the same Meeting at Newcastle which gave rise to the design for the 

 greatest combined scientific operation in which the Association has ever been 

 engaged, for the extension of our knowledge of the laws of magnetism and 

 meteorology. 



