1865.] President's Address. 485 



To the information contained in this letter I have now the satisfaction 

 of being able to add that since its receipt Mr. Grubb has signified his 

 readiness to proceed in the construction of a telescope corresponding to 

 the specification contained in his letter to Dr. Robinson of Dec. 3, 1 863, 

 printed in the second portion of the correspondence respecting the Southern 

 Telescope, the execution to be under the supervision of the Earl of Rosse, 

 Dr. Robinson, and Mr. Warren De la Rue, who, on their parts, have 

 accepted the responsibilities of superintendence. The contract between 

 the Crown Agent for Victoria and Mr. Grubb is in process of execu- 

 tion, and in eighteen months from its date we may hope that the telescope 

 will be in readiness to be embarked for Melbourne, where in the meantime 

 preparations will be made for its reception and mounting. The selection 

 of an Astronomer fitted by education and acquirements to be entrusted 

 with its use at Melbourne, and who may be willing to devote his entire 

 energies to the cultivation of the splendid field which will be open to him, 

 must be the next anxious and important duty devolving upon the Mel- 

 bourne authorities. If in its execution they should require any assistance 

 from the Royal Society, such assistance will assuredly be most readily given. 



The arrangements connected with this subject being so far advanced, I 

 have thought it desirable to place on record a consecutive statement of the 

 steps by which they have been brought to their present stage ; and I have 

 done this in the form of a Note (Note A)*, to avoid trespassing unneces- 

 sarily upon your present attention. 



The welcome intelligence has been received from Colonel "Walker, F.R..S., 

 Superintendent of the Trigonometrical Survey of India, of the safe arrival 

 in that country of the Pendulums prepared for the experiments which it is 

 proposed to make at the principal stations of the survey, and of the 

 vacuum-apparatus in which the pendulums are to be vibrated. As it has 

 been proposed to make the Kew Observatory the Base Station of the 

 important observations which may be made with these instruments in many 

 parts of India, a full and very careful series of Base observations were made 

 with them at Kew before their departure for India. These have been 

 printed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in the present year in the 

 form of a communication from Messrs. Balfour Stewart and Loewy. 



In the course of the last Session an important paper was communicated 

 to the Society, and has been since printed in the Philosophical Transactions 

 for 1865, Art. V., entitled On the Magnetic Character of the Armour- 

 plated Ships of the Royal Navy, and on the Effect on the Compass of par- 

 ticular arrangements of Iron in a Ship," by Staff-Commander Frederick John 

 Evans, R.N., F.R.S., Superintendent of the Compass Department of Her 

 Majesty's Navy, and Archibald Smith, Esq., F.R.S. 



In the course of the reading of this paper, and in the discussion which 

 * See note A, p. 503. 



