$198] Flamsteed 251 



observations. Thus while Hevel (chapter vin., 153) 

 was the last and most accurate observer of the old school, 

 employing methods not differing essentially from those 

 which had been in use for centuries, Flamsteed belongs 

 to the new school, and his methods differ rather in detail 

 than in principle from those now in vogue for similar work 

 at Greenwich, Paris, or Washington. This adoption of 

 new methods, together with the most scrupulous care in 

 details, rendered Flamsteed's observations considerably 

 more accurate than any made in his time or earlier, the 

 first definite advance afterwards being made by Bradley 

 (218). 



Flamsteed compared favourably with many observers 

 by not merely taking and recording observations, but by 

 performing also the tedious process known as reduction 

 ( 218), whereby the results of the observation are put 

 into a form suitable for use by other astronomers ; this 

 process is usually performed in modern observatories by 

 assistants, but in Flamsteed's case had to be done almost 

 exclusively by the astronomer himself. From this and 

 other causes he was extremely slow in publishing observa- 

 tions ; we have already alluded (chapter ix., 192) to the 

 difficulty which Newton had in extracting lunar observations 

 from him, and after a time a feeling that the object for 

 which the Observatory had been founded was not being ful- 

 filled became pretty general among astronomers. Flamsteed 

 always suffered from bad health as well as from the 

 pecuniary and other difficulties which have been referred 

 to ; moreover he was much more anxious that his observa- 

 tions should be kept back till they were as accurate as 

 possible, than that they should be published in a less 

 perfect form and used for the researches which he once 

 called " Mr. Newton's crotchets " ; consequently he took 

 remonstrances about the delay in the publication of his 

 observations in bad part. Some painful quarrels occurred 

 between Flamsteed on the one hand and Newton and 

 Halley on the other. The last straw was the unauthorised 

 publication in 1712, under the editorship of Halley, of a 

 volume of Flamsteed's observations, a proceeding to which 

 Flamsteed not unnaturally replied by calling Halley a 

 "malicious thief." Three years later he succeeded in 



