REPORT ON ASTRONOMY. 
131 
considered as an indication of public feeling on the subject of 
Astronomy, or as a means for promoting the science, must be 
considered as most fortunate. Astronomy in England has un¬ 
doubtedly received a strong impulse from the institution of this 
Society; and the four volumes of Memoirs which it has pub¬ 
lished contain some of the most valuable contributions to Astro¬ 
nomy that any country has yet produced. 
I must here observe, that nothing appears to me to prove 
more strongly the extension of accurate science than the in¬ 
creased demand for original observations. Astronomers are now 
sensible that though observations may be reduced, and the 
results exhibited in the form most valuable at the time of pub¬ 
lication, future researches will generally give the means of im¬ 
proving them; and that the opportunity of doing this will be 
lost, except the observations are published in the shape in which 
they are made. 
I have spoken above of the Astronomical Ephemerides, with¬ 
out allusion to that which forms their distinctive character. 
The Nautical Almanac had been followed by most of the 
others in the system of giving with accuracy only the places of 
the sun and the moon and principal stars, and such quantities 
as were necessary for nautical observations ; the places of the 
planets being exhibited very roughly. In two works published 
by Schumacher (beginning with 1822,) the places of the planets 
were given more accurately. In the Berliner Jahrbuch for 
1830 not only was the accuracy of the solar and lunar places 
increased, but the places of the planets were given with the 
same accuracy. Mean time was also adopted in every part, 
to the exclusion of apparent time. The comparison of obser¬ 
vations with tables becomes thus an easy work. The English 
Government, by the advice of the Astronomical Society, have 
determined on making this improvement in the Nautical 
Almanac: and the volume for 1831 will appear with these 
alterations. Among the many additions made by Encke to 
practical astronomy, the example which he has thus set is not 
the least. 
II. At the epoch from which this Report commences, the mural 
quadrants were still the only instruments (assisted by the use 
of the zenith-sector,) for observing zenith-distances, at the 
Greenwich Observatory, and at most of the Continental Obser¬ 
vatories. At Palermo, however, a reversible circle or “ altitude 
and azimuth instrument,” of six feet diameter, was in the hands 
of Piazzi: and a similar instrument was in preparation for the 
Dublin Observatory, and was mounted early in the century. 
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1 /v 
