66 Astronomical Society. 



ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY. 



Feb. IS. {Extract J'rom the Report of the Council, presented at the 

 Anniversary Meeting). — The Society has to lament tlie loss, by death, 

 of two only of its members during the past year. These are Captain 

 Pringle Stokes, of the Royal Navy, who was engaged in surveying 

 the coasts of South America; and Dr. William Hyde Wollaston. 



To Dr. Wollaston every part of science seemed equally familiar; 

 and of him it might perhaps be more truly said than of any philo- 

 sopher who has preceded him, that " nil erat quod non tetigit, nil 

 tetigit quod non ornavit." Astronomy was one of his chief and fa- 

 vourite pursuits — a taste inherited from his father, and cherished 

 by his intimacy with the late Astronomer Royal of Dublin (now 

 Bishop of Cloyne) and the present Astronomer Royal of Greenwich 

 — an intimacy commenced in early youth at Cambridge, and main- 

 tained through life. Science is indebted to him for many ingenious 

 and important speculations; such are his papers published in the 

 Philosophical Transactions, on horizontal retractions, and on the 

 horizontal refraction and dip of the horizon, containing his curious 

 and ingenious invention of the dip-sector. Among the most re- 

 markable of his astronomical papers, however, is that on the finite 

 extent of the atmosphere, which affords a striking instance of the 

 advantages that may accrue to science by the union of remote 

 branches of knowledge in the same mind. The arguments brought 

 forward in that paper in favour of the non-divisibility of matter in 

 infinitum, from astronomical phsenomena, carry with them at least 

 every semblance of soundness, and afford a singular specimen of hi8 

 acute and scrutinizing habit of thought ; while the almost miracu- 

 lous delicacy and curious felicity of his manipulation in the practi- 

 cal departments of science — that microscopic tact, which in a 

 thousand instances led him, through routes impervious to grosser 

 intellects, to the most striking, unexpected, and novel results — is 

 there exemplified in a remarkable manner, in the minute and appa- 

 rently insignificant apparatus with which he was enabled to verify 

 his own views, under circumstances which would effectually baffle 

 ordinary instruments and ordinary observers. 



The sister science of optics is even more indebted to Dr. Wol- 

 laston than astronomy. His verification of the Huygenian law of 

 double refraction ; his investigation of the refractive and dispersive 

 powers of bodies, as a separate branch of physical inquiry, on which 

 the perfection of the achromatic telescope depends ; his discovery 

 of the dark lines in the spectrum, since independently observed, 

 with more refined means, and in greater detail, by Fraunhofer; but 

 chiefly as concerns our science, the ingenious and elegant method 

 practised by him for perfecting the adjustment of the triple achro- 

 matic object-glass, give him the highest claims to eminence in this 

 department. The instrument on which he tried and perfected this 

 mode of adjustment is now, through his liberality, the property of 

 this Society. 



The Council think it right to include in this Report the letter con- 

 taining his announcement of this valuable gift. 



^ My 



