!6o SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. PT. in. 



seventy -six years, reckoning backwards from 1682. There- 

 fore he thought these must all be the same comet, and he 

 foretold its return in 1758. It came as predicted, and 

 has ever since been called * Halley's comet.' Halley 

 died in 1742, and with him ends the astronomy of the 

 seventeenth century. 



Besides the discoveries we have mentioned there was a 

 great advance in the attention paid by government to the 

 study of astronomy. In 1675 tne celebrated observer 

 Flamsteed was appointed astronomer to the King, and the 

 * Royal Observatory ' at Greenwich, then called Flamsteed 

 House, was built in order that regular observations might 

 be carried on. Since 1675 there has always been an 

 Astronomer-Royal in England. 



Chief Works consulted. Proctor's ' Transits of Venus ; ' HerschePs 

 'Astronomy;' Denison's 'Astronomy without Mathematics j ' Airy's 

 ' Popular Astronomy,' 



