5 
1914-15.] Opening Address by the President. 
perseverance and perfection of form. The greatest single completed 
monument of astronomical labour is his application and development of 
Hansen’s method to the theory of Jupiter and Saturn, to which he devoted 
the whole of twenty years. 
The importance of Hill’s work has been freely recognised by learned 
bodies for many years back. 
He was elected an Honorary Fellow of our Society in 1908. He was 
also a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, which conferred 
the Copley Medal upon him in 1909, a correspondent of the Paris Academy 
of Sciences, and an Honorary Sc.D. of Cambridge. 
His personal tastes were modest and retiring. He spent thirty years 
of his life in the obscure position of assistant computer of the American 
Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. Leaving this on the completion of his 
work on Jupiter and Saturn, he withdrew to a farm which he had 
inherited from his father, at West Nyack, twenty-live miles from 
New York. 
He was appointed to a professorship at Columbia University, but held 
it only for a short period. His scientific productiveness continued to the 
end of his life. 
He was born in New York on 3rd March 1838, studied at Rutger’s 
College, New Brunswick, in 1855, joined the staff of the American 
Ephemeris in 1861, and died in May 1914, at the age of 76. 
Capt. George J. Johnstone was born at Dunnet, Caithness, on 12th 
March 1852. He was for many years the Marine Superintendent in 
Calcutta of the British India Steam Navigation Company, and after his 
retirement in 1907 he settled in Edinburgh. He was highly qualified as 
a nautical expert, having a practical experience of all the engineering 
questions which have to do with ship construction. 
He became a Fellow of our Society in 1902, and was a member of the 
Institute of Naval Architects and of the Institute of Engineers and Ship- 
builders of Scotland. He also held His Majesty’s commission as Lieutenant 
in the Royal Navy Reserve. 
He died on 26th December 1913. 
James Macdonald, born in 1852, in the parish of Glenrinnes in 
Banffshire, was one of a family, several of whom distinguished themselves 
in agricultural journalism. He himself had a thorough knowledge of 
practical farming, and was a conscientious student of the sciences more 
intimately associated with agriculture. He w^as for several years the 
