Ixxvi Proceedings of the South African Philosophical Society. 



refinement in its construction and its use, to give tlie new engine of 

 research the requisite reliabihty. Tliese prehminary difficulties are 

 now overcome, and daily results of the greatest importance are 

 being added to our storehouse of knowledge. 



It would occupy too long were I to enter on the numerous 

 problems to which this branch of the new astronomy is applicable, 

 but it will be evident how great an advantage to astronomy must 

 be this new power to determine not, as formerly, only angular 

 velocity at right angles to the line of sight, but the actual linear 

 velocity of motion in the line of sight itself. These examples, which 

 I fear I have quoted at too great length, enable me to explain in a 

 fsw words the full significance of the ceremony which we have 

 assembled to-day to witness. 



Until the year 1894, there existed neither at the Cape nor in any 

 observatory in the Southern Hemisphere, any adequate equipment 

 for pursuit of the new astronomy, nor was there apparently much 

 hope of the need being supplied. For forty years the new astronomy 

 had been vigorously prosecuted in the Northern Hemisphere, the first 

 great harvest of results obtainable with moderate means had been 

 reaped, and great estabhshments were founded for research in the 

 new fields of work. It thus became obvious that if anything was to 

 be done to equalise the possibilities of research in these new fields 

 in both hemispheres, no small outlay would be required. On my 

 appointment as H.M. Astronomer in 1879, Mr. Newall, who then 

 possessed the largest telescope in England, offered the loan of it for 

 a period of years to prosecute research in the new astronomy at the 

 Cape, but it was considered by the authorities at home that the cost 

 of its transport and the erection of a suitable building and dome 

 could not be entertained unless the telescope might remain perma- 

 nently the property of the Observatory. Mr. Newall had good 

 reason for limiting his offer to loan ; for his son, then a young man, 

 gave promise of scientific tasies, and he is now using that instrument 

 at Cambridge, and obtaining with it the most refined spectroscopic 

 results that have yet been secured in England. The busy years 

 rolled on, and I had almost resigned myself to the idea that, during 

 the period of my directorate at least, the Eoyal Observatory at the 

 Cape must limit itself to the pursuit of the old astronomy, for which 

 purpose it was well equipped. But in 1894 arrived a letter from Mr. 

 Frank McClean, offering to present, for the use in the Southern 

 Hemisphere, and preferably to the Cape, a telescope and observatory 

 the specification for which corresponds with the instrument now 

 before us and the building in which we are now assembled. Mr. 

 McClean further stated that the optical part of the instrument had 



