17 
1887 .] C. Piazzi Smyth on the Edinhurgh Equatorial. 
length ; eye-pieces, and slow motion handles being equally ex- 
tended. 
Appendix II. 
The Financial Kequirements and Difficulty. 
Before the Astronomer consented to join in the Board of 
Visitors’ project, about 1870, of applying to Government for a large 
Equatorial, he pointed out that such an instrument, even if once 
set up complete, would require further expenditure year after year 
to keep it fully efficient. And that the working with it would be 
so peculiarly onerous and responsible, that the salaries of the officers 
of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, already acknowledged to be 
at, or below, starvation point, should be raised more nearly to the 
level of those of other Observatories, or of any ordinary Government 
offices. 
He was told in answer that all that was most certainly right, and 
would be brought about ; while the Board of Visitors — whom 
Government had appointed years before expressly to advise them 
on such matters, and how to keep up the Observatory thereby in all 
future time as “ a proper Royal Observatory,” — did most honour- 
ably proceed to frame a scheme of modest improvement not only to 
the Observers’ salaries, but to the available income of the Observa- 
tory, to be expended by the Astronomer in instrumental repairs, 
experiments and improvements at his discretion. 
Under these promising circumstances the Astronomer joined the 
application of the Board for the large Equatorial. That instrument 
was accordingly allowed by Government in 1871, was in part set 
up, under the authority of the Office of Works in London in 1872 ; 
and in the following year, when the erection was found very 
incomplete, the scheme of the Board of Visitors for increasing the 
salaries and available income of the Observatory to a point suffi- 
cient to finish, maintain, and work the instrument — for a long time 
not unfavourably entertained by Government, — was suddenly and 
finally disallowed. 
The Board of Visitors indeed continued to apply to Government, 
as represented by the Home Office, until in 1876 the then Home 
Secretary, Mr, since Sir Richard, now Lord Cross, adopted the 
following expedient for escaping from the terms of agreement under 
VOL. XV. 6/6/88 B 
