200 Royal Irish Academy. 



gating the proper motions of the stars, and for the same reason it "u-ill 

 continue to be of permanent value. Afterwards the mural circle was 

 furnished with a new telescope, having a seven-inch object-glass, 'and 

 a chronograph was obtained from Knoblich, of Altona, and with these 

 1000 of Lalande's stars were re-observed, three or four times each, in 

 the years 1868-1876, and the results published in the Transactions of 

 the Eoyal Dublin Society, 1879. 



Besides the astronomical Papers contributed by Dr. Eobinson to 

 the Transactions (see appended list) and to the Proceedings of the 

 Academy, he has written various others in the Transactions and in the 

 Proceedings of the Royal Society, in the Memoirs and in the Monthly 

 Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in the Reports of the 

 British Association. 



During his long, active, and distinguished scientific career, Dr. 

 Eobinson made a great number of communications to different 

 societies on subjects pertaining to various branches of physics. It 

 would be impossible to give, within our present limits, even a brief 

 general sketch of the results of his labours. We must content our- 

 selves with referring more particularly to his widely known and 

 much used invention, the Cup Anemometer, and to his investigations 

 of its principles. 



The essential parts of this instrument were devised by him in 1843, 

 and subsequent improvements made until it was completed in 1846, 

 in which year it was described by him before the British Association at 

 Southampton. In 1850 he read before the Academy a Paper the ob- 

 ject of which was to approximate to the theory of the instrument. In 

 1874 there appeared a Memoir by M. Dohrandt of the St. Petersburg 

 Meteorological Observatory, describing an elaborate series of experi- 

 ments which he had made to determine the relation between the 

 velocity of the rotation of the Cup Anemometer and that of the wind. 

 Dr. Robinson's attention being thus di'awn again to the subject, he 

 read to the Academy in 1 875 a Paper, which appears in the Proceedings, 

 " On the Theory of the Cup Anemometer and the Determination of its 

 Constants." In this he gave a criticism of Dohrandt' s experiments, 

 and suggestions for the removal of some objections to which they 

 seemed to be open, with proposals for other experiments which he 

 hoped he might afterwards carry out. This he soon had a favourable 

 opportunity of doing, with apparatus constructed by Mr. Howard 



