6 president's address. 



December, and he so hurried on the building that it was completed 

 and ready for use by the end of April. He, with both assistants, 

 worked at high-pressure observing until June 16, 1823, when Mr. 

 Rumker, owing to some difference in opinion l^etween himself 

 and Sir Thomas, left the Observatory. Dunlop at the time was 

 not a trained Astronomer, but he was a ready leai-ner, and a little 

 training from Sir Thomas made him master of the instruments, 

 and then he began that well-known feat of observing which pro- 

 bably has never been equalled. By the end of February 1826, 

 or in two years and eight months, he made 40,000 Observations, 

 and so catalogued 7385 stars. He then left the Observatory, and 

 in 16 months at his own house in Parramatta he catalogued 621 

 nebulfe and clusters of stars, made drawings of the Milky Way 

 nebeculfe, major and minor, and many nebuhv, catalogued and 

 measured 253 double stars. For this he got the gold medal of 

 the Royal Astronomical Society, and afterwards gold medals from 

 the Royal Institute of France and from the King of the Belgians. 

 Meantime Rumker had returned to the observatory and agreed 

 to carry out a work that was recommended by Sir Humphry 

 Davy as President of the Royal Society, viz., the measurement of 

 a]\ arc of tlie meridian in New South Wales (that ai"c is not 

 measured yet.) Sir Humphry Davy urged that " the measure- 

 ment of an arc of the meridian in New South Wales would not 

 only be of importance to astronomy in aftbrding data for determin- 

 ing correctly the figure of the earth, a matter of great interest to 

 navigation, but would likewise be useful in laying the foundation 

 for a correct survey of our colonies in that great and unexplored 

 country" (dated 20th October, 1823.) Five years later, in 1828, 

 things had made some progress, Mr. Rumker had agreed to- 

 measure the arc, and he ordered the apparatus ; but in January of 

 the following year, 1829, he again left the observatory, and that 

 for the time was an end of the arc of the meridian proposal. Dunlop 

 was reappointed in 1831, and the observatory lingered on without 

 publisliing until 1847, when it was dismantled. One cannot 

 look back at the history of that Observatory without pain, owing 

 to the misfortunes which seemed to u]3set every effort to make it 

 useful. Sir Thomas was evidently a first-class observer with the 

 sextant, but knew nothing of fixed instruments ; hence he bought 

 a lot of instruments second-hand, and wholly unfit for the work 

 they were intended to do, and Rumker, who was, without doubt, 

 an able astronomer, had some bee in his bonnet that became very 

 troublesome in the atmosphere of Parramatta. Sir Thomas 

 Brisbane had the command of men and means in abundance, the 

 will and the ability to direct, and so all but the two little ifs was 

 ready for the measurement of an arc of the meridian — a work too 

 long left undone, and one whicli I hope this Association will take 

 up, not witli its funds, but witli its influence, and urge on to 

 completion. It is a work of the greatest scientific and practical 



