35 



illustrious Flamsteed was chosen for the office. The expense of 

 erecting the building was not to exceed 500, but no provision was 

 made for fitting the establishment with the necessary instruments, 

 and for some fifteen years none were furnished by the Government. 

 In the meantime, however, the Royal Society lent such astro- 

 nomical instruments as it possessed, and Flamsteed, at his own 

 charges and with the assistance of friends, added others. In 

 December, 1710, Queen Anne appointed the President, and such 

 other of the Fellows of the Royal Society as he should think fit, 

 to be Visitors of the Observatory. This arrangement, with some 

 modifications, still subsists. At the accession of William IV the 

 Board of Visitors was reconstituted so as to consist of the President 

 and five Fellows of the Royal Society, the President and five 

 Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society, together with the 

 Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford and the Plumian 

 Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge. The Board is reappointed 

 at the commencement of each sovereign's reign, but its constitu- 

 tion has remained nearly unchanged. At present there are six 

 representatives of the two Societies besides their presidents, and 

 the Hydrographer of the Navy has been added (pp. 298-301). 



From the outset of its career much of the energy of the Society 

 was spent in foreign correspondence, in giving information or 

 advice upon inquiries that were received, in seeking news, or in 

 instigating researches in foreign places. The Letter-books of the 

 Society contain many letters that passed between the Society and 

 various learned bodies and individuals abroad ; the first Letter- 

 book begins with one dated July 22, 1661, and addressed by the 

 then President, Sir Robert Moray, to Monsieur de Monmort, 

 requesting the interchange of scientific communications. M. de 

 Monmort, a mathematician of note, was the patron of science at 

 whose house in Paris there assembled that small body of savants 

 who later, in 1666, were incorporated as the * Academic des 

 Sciences '. 



In order to carry out investigations more efficiently, special 

 committees were appointed to make inquiries concerning par- 

 ticular questions, and to report thereon, as, for instance, when Sir 

 John Lawson desired that a committee might be appointed * to 

 examine Mr. Greatrix's Diving-instrument, or to direct a good 



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