602 MEMOIR OF SIR THOMAS MAKDOUGALL BRISBANE. 
length, by TRoucHToN ; a mural circle of 2 feet in diameter, the workmanship 
also of TROUGHTON, and said to have been the model on which that of Green- 
wich was constructed, and which had long been in his possession; and a, fine 
16-inch repeating circle of ReEIcHENBACH, were destined for this service, and two 
gentlemen engaged as assistants at considerable salaries,—the one a foreigner of 
high estimation as a mathematician and calculator, the other Mr Duntop, of 
whom I shall have occasion to say much more. It ought to be mentioned that 
this noble equipage was furnished entirely from Sir THomas’s private fortune, 
and maintained wholly at his own expense. 
“Immediately on his arrival in the colony in 1821, and so soon as an obser- 
vatory could be erected and the instruments established, the work of observation 
commenced, and continued, with little interruption, under the immediate super- 
intendence and direction of Sir Toomas BrisBane himself, who, though the press- 
ing and important duties of his high office would of necessity seldom admit of his 
devoting any material proportion of his time to actual observation, yet frequently 
took a personal share in the labours of the observatory as a relaxation from higher 
duties ; and, in particular, a great portion of the transits were made by himself. 
The first fruits of this enterprise were the cbservations of the December solstice of 
1821, which were published in the astronomical notices of ScHuMACHER ; in which 
work also appear those of both the solstices of 1822, and a number of detached 
and occasional observations, which reached Europe at different times by a variety 
of channels, and found their way into that valuable collection. 
“The solstices of 1823 were communicated by Sir THomas BrisBane to this 
Society in a letter to our late worthy President, together with a considerably 
extensive series of observations of principal stars, chiefly those visible in both 
hemispheres, and which have undergone a careful reduction and close scrutiny in 
the hands of Dr Brinxuey, the details of which, as well as the original observa- 
tions, are printed in the first part of the second volume of the Memoirs of this 
Society, and which justify in the eyes of that experienced observer, as they must 
in those of every practical astronomer, a decided opinion of the great care and 
skill with which they have been made. 
“A great number of occasional observations, such as eclipses, occultations 
and observations of the planets Venus and Uranus near their conjunctions and 
oppositions, and of comets from the same source, are also printed in the same 
volume. One of the most remarkable single results we owe to the establishment 
of Sir Toomas BrisBANE’s observatory, consists in the re-discovery of the comet 
of EnckKE in its predicted place, on the 2d of June 1822. 
©The history of this extraordinary body is well known to all who hear 
me, and as its re-discovery at Parramatta by Mr Rtmxer has already been on a 
former occasion distinctly noticed and rewarded by this Society, there is no 
occasion that I should here enlarge on it; and yet I cannot help pausing a 
