xxiii 



Stone secured successful observations; the paper he wrote on the 

 results of them was not printed before his death, but it will shortly 

 appear in the memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, 



Stone's scientific papers number in all about 150, and cover a 

 very wide range ; they were chiefly communicated to the Royal 

 Astronomical Society. 



Such, in brief, is the record of Stone's labours. Very very few 

 astronomers have done more of solid and useful work for the 

 advancement of astronomy. But for the simultaneous and almost 

 phenomenal labours of Gould at Cordoba, it might be said of Stone 

 that he created our knowledge of the exact sidereal astronomy of the 

 Southern Hemisphere. 



Unlike Maclear and Gould, he was not a great observer ; at 

 Greenwich he personally made about 2| per cent, of the observa- 

 tions secured there during the period 18G0 to 1869 ; at the Cape and 

 Oxford he made very few of the observations, but he closely super- 

 vised his assistants, and laboured early and late at every detail of 

 reduction and examination. 



Trained in the rigid and systematic school of Airy, and gifted 

 with remarkable powers of speed, accuracy, and endurance in com- 

 putation, he was enabled to carry out, with a very small staff, the 

 great record of work which he produced. He made the chief part 

 of Maclear's meridian observations available for science, and created 

 his two great catalogues — the Cape Catalogue of 12,441 stars for 

 1880, and the Radeliffe Catalogue of 6424 stars for 1890. By these 

 works his name will be chiefly remembered. But the influence of a 

 man so earnest and diligent as Stone was in most departments of 

 astronomy, can never die ; it will live to inspire like zeal and devo- 

 tion in others, who are seeking truth for truth's sake, as Stone did. 



After a short and painless illness, Stone died' suddenly at the 

 Radcliffe Observatory on the 9th of May, 1897, the nineteenth anni- 

 versary of the death of Main, his predecessor. 



Stone was a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge. In 1868 he 

 was elected a Fellow of the Roj^al Society, and, as already stated, 

 was in 1869 awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical 

 Society. He was a Corresponding Member of the Societe Rationale 

 des Sciences Naturelles, Cherbourg, and Honorary Member of the 

 Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. In 1881 ho 

 received the Lalande Medal of the Paris Academy of Sciences for 

 his Cape catalogue; in 1892 the University of Padua conferred upon 

 him the honorary degree of Doctor of Natural Philosophy, and from 

 March, 1883, he was a Member of the Meteorological Council, 

 London, 



D. G. 



VOL. LXIL 



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