1887 .] 
Chairman’s Address. 
7 
Edinburgh Astronomical Observatory is a Government edifice, taken 
over by Government from a private society under an obligation to 
maintain it in perpetuity. It is understood that, in what relates to 
original scientific work, the operations of the Observatory have been 
to a considerable extent suspended in consequence of the want of 
the necessary instrumental means. The old instruments are worn 
out, and the new equatorial is incomplete. The English Govern- 
ment, which in matters relating to science acts spasmodically, and 
only under pressure, some ten years ago paid a large sum of money 
for the purchase of a handsome equatorial telescope for the Observa- 
tory at Edinburgh. During these ten years they have allowed their 
instrument to remain unproductive, apparently because they would 
not advance the few hundred pounds that are necessary to adapt 
the instrument to the special requirements of the work which it is 
to perform. I shall not enter into further detail in this matter, 
because the Astronomer-Royal is to read a paper this evening on 
the Edinburgh Equatorial in 1887. 
But if the Edinburgh Observatory is to be kept up as a national 
institution, — and I trust it will remain such in accordance with the 
agreement between the founders and the Government of the day, — 
it must be adequately endowed and properly equipped. After the 
Royal Society has finished the work it has taken in hand in re- 
lation to Ben Nevis, I hope you will take up the subject of the 
Edinburgh Observatory, and that you will not let the matter rest 
until the Observatory has been restored to the position of a first- 
class observing station. It may be thought by some that it is not 
desirable to maintain at the public expense two such establishments 
— the one in London and the other in Edinburgh. Nor would it 
be desirable, if the two establishments were to be employed in doing 
the same kind of work. But there is a vast amount of skilled work 
to be done in Sidereal Astronomy, which can only be done in a 
public observatory, where, as a matter of duty, assistants are in 
attendance every night. The researches to be undertaken here 
need not be of the same description as the work undertaken at 
Greenwich. In proof of this assertion, I will only mention what 
is being done at the present time in the Government Observatory 
at the Cape, by that accomplished astronomer and indefatigable 
worker. Dr Gill. 
