lxviii report — 1860. 



made a similar request to those who are thoroughly conversant with it ; and it 

 is on this account that comparatively few of the applications to the Govern- 

 ment Grant Committee are rejected. Moreover, inasmuch as every grant 

 passed by the proposed Board would afterwards receive the jealous scrutiny 

 of Parliament, whose sanction must of course be obtained, I am disposed to 

 think that were I to support the establishment of such a scientific Council, or 

 the formal recognition by the State of some existing scientific body in that 

 capacity, I should be advocating that which would prove a valuable addition 

 to the Institutions of my country. 



Before I finally conclude my observations on the important question I 

 have introduced to your notice, and on which perhaps I have already said 

 too much at the risk of wearying you, I must guard myself against one 

 misapprehension, and that is, that we are anxious to obtain a large augmenta- 

 tion of the 36IOOO now voted by Parliament. This is by no means our wish ; 

 that annual sum is in ordinary years sufficient, and sometimes more than 

 sufficient, and there is nothing that would be more deprecated than any 

 large increase ; but there is a very general feeling among those most 

 competent to form an opinion on these matters, that when the well-con- 

 sidered interests of science and the national good demand an extraordinary 

 outlay, such as cannot be defrayed out of the proceeds of the ordinary yearly 

 grant, — as, for example, for surveying and exploring expeditions, for the 

 establishment and maintenance of magnetic observatories, for the purchase 

 of costly astronomical instruments, for expensive astronomical excursions, 

 such as that to Teneriffe, — that the expediency of the grant is more likely to 

 be properly investigated and tested, if referred to those whose avocations have 

 given them the requisite knowledge, than if the concession or rejection of the 

 proposal be permitted to depend on such accidents, as, whether this or that 

 individual apply, or this or that statesman fill the office of Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer. 



I trust that I may be pardoned the long digression in which I have 

 indulged, in consideration of the importance of the subject. 



Having detailed some of the valuable services of our amateur Astronomers, 

 let me not be accused of being unjust to the professional contributors to the 

 data of that noble science. Most valuable Star Catalogues have resulted from 

 the labours of our public Observatories, and from Greenwich in particular. 

 There are also two Observatories which have, as it were, a quasi public 

 character, viz. the Radcliffe Observatory and that of Armagh, which have 

 contributed much to this department of Astronomy. Your former President, 

 the accomplished and learned Dr. Robinson of Armagh, has lately presented 

 to the astronomical world a Catalogue of the places of more than 5000 stars, 

 and in so doing has conferred a most important benefit on his favourite 

 science. 



But it would be an unpardonable omission were I to neglect to express our 

 gratitude to our great National Institution at Greenwich, for the manner in 



