XXXVill REPORT—1863. 
Cambridge Meeting. The actual sum expended up to the present time 
amounts to £89, leaving a balance of £11, which will cover the outlay for a 
few pieces of apparatus which are still required. 
Between February 7 and May of the present year pictures of the sun were 
occasionally procured at Kew; but the Heliograph could not be fairly got to 
work until the completion of the photographic-room and the final adjust- 
ment of the instrument itself. From the lst of May to the present time the 
Heliograph has been continuously worked by a qualified Assistant, under the 
immediate supervision of Mr. Beckley. Two photographs are taken on every 
working day, one to the east, and the other to the west of the meridian, when 
atmospheric conditions permit of this being done. From May Ist to August 
14th inclusive, there have been fifty-four working days. Four positive copies 
are made regularly from each negative, one of which it is proposed to retain 
at Kew, and it is in contemplation to distribute the others. 
Mr. Stewart, after an inspection of all the sun-pictures obtained by the 
Kew Heliograph, is inclined to think that the behaviour of solar spots with 
respect to increase and diminution has reference to ecliptical longitudes, and 
is possibly connected with the position of the nearer planets; but it will re- 
quire a longer series of pictures to determine this, than that which has yet 
been obtained. 
The Heliograph constructed by Mr. Dallmeyer for Wilna, under Mr. De la 
Rue’s superintendence, has been completed, and will be shortly sent to Russia, 
together with a micrometer and protractor constructed by Messrs. Troughton 
and Simms, which will be employed in the measurement and reduction of the 
sun-pictures. 
Of the £150 granted by the Association in 1861 for the purpose of 
obtaining a series of photographic pictures of the solar surface, a sum of 
£137 3s. has been expended from February 1862 to February 1863, and the 
balance, £12 17s., has been returned to the Association. 
In 1860 a sum of £90 was voted for an additional Photographic Assistant, 
of which £50 was received and expended in that year. The balance, £40, 
was again granted in 1861, out of which £20 2s. 10d. have been expended. 
The working of the Kew Photoheliograph during the year, commencing 
in February 1863, will be defrayed out of a grant placed in the hands of 
Mr. De la Rue by the Royal Society for that purpose. : 
It will be seen from the Statement appended to this Report, that the expen- 
diture of the Observatory has exceeded its income by £7 8s. 6d.; but there 
is £30 to be received from the Russian Government for the verification of 
instruments. The Committee recommend that a sum of £600 should be 
granted for the expenditure of the current year. . 
Kew Observatory, Joun P. Gassror, 
14 August, 1863. Chairman, 
Report of the Parliamentary Committee, to the Meeting of the British 
Association, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in August, 1863. 
The Parliamentary Committee have the honour to report as follows :— 
“The Earls of Rosse and De Grey, Lord Stanley, and Sir Joseph Paxton 
have vacated their seats; but your Committee recommend that Lords Rosse 
and Stanley be re-elected. 
«Your Committee also recommend that two of the vacancies be supplied 
by the election of Lord Houghton and Mr. N. Kendall. 
