66 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION A. 



forty-six-inch Equatorial from the Parramatta Observatory which 

 belonged to the set of instruments which he brought out. 



The estimate in which Dunlop was held in England at this 

 time is e^ddent from the fact that the Royal Astronomical Society 

 gave him its highest honour, a Gold Medal, in presenting which, 

 on the 8th February, 1828, Sir John Herschel said: — "I 

 have now, gentlemen, to call your attention to the award 

 of another gold medal, this time to Mr. Dunlop, Sir Thomas 

 Brisbane's assistant, who went out with him in 1821, and 

 who has since the middle of 1823, when his companion, Mr. 

 Rumker, left the Observatory, remained in sole charge of 

 the instruments, and up to the departure of Sir Thomas 

 from the colony, continued an uninterrupted series of obser- 

 vations with a care and diligence seldom equalled and never 

 surpassed. The records of this Society bear sufficient testimony 

 to the merits of Mr. Rumker, and to our sense of them. But in 

 Mr. Dunlop were combined qualities, rendering him, above all 

 others, the very individual fitted for the duties iinposed on him — 

 zealous, active, leady — but above all (and the combination is not 

 an ordinary one) industrious and methodical. In the vast mass 

 of observations made and registered by him all is equable and 

 smooth as if the observations had been made at a sitting. No 

 long intervals of inactivity ; nothing hurried or sketchy, but the 

 same painstaking laborious hlling in pervading the whole and 

 shewing that the observers whole heart was in his work. 



" These considerations alone would have rendered it impossible 

 to your Council to disunite in any expression, or mark of their 

 approbation, individuals who have thus, each in his sphere, gone 

 hand in hand together towards the perfection of Southern 

 Astronomy, even had the labours of Mr. Dunlop been confined 

 to the ordinary business of an Observatory, or to the observation 

 of fixed instruments. But this is very far from having been the 

 case. The nebulous, as well as the sidereal heavens have occupied 

 his attention, and in the prosecution of this most difficult and 

 delicate branch of astronomy, he has availed himself entirely of 

 his own resources in the most literal sense. The instrument 

 which he used being not only his own, but the work of his own 

 hands* ; and the observations being performed by him after the 

 departure of Sir Thomas Brisbane from the colony, at a personal 

 sacrifice of his private interests, and in the face of difficulties 

 which would have deterred anyone not animated with a real and 

 disinterested love of science, from their prosecution. The results 

 of these observations have been the description and determination 

 of upwards of 600 nebulte and clusters of stars, and 253 double 

 stars." 



* A reflecting telescope, 9 inches in diameter, and 9 feet focus, mounted as a transit 

 instrument, at his private house in Parramatta. I have tried repeatedly to trace this 

 instrument, but it was never se^n at his house at Brisbane Water, and I do not find any 

 reference to it during his second stay at Parramatta, 1832 to 1847 ; and it seems probable 

 that it was left behind in Scotland, perhaps with Sir Thomas Brisbane. 



