184 
SECOND REPORT— - 183 £. 
in one word, to the best of my knowledge nothing has been 
done in England. In the lunar and planetary theories we have 
done nothing, not even in the way of numerical application. In 
the theory of the new planets and the periodical comets, we not 
only have done nothing, but we have scarcely known w T hat others 
have done. With regard to the latter points, the distinguishing 
discoveries of the present century, our humiliation is great. 
Some of the new planets are very faint, and all are subject to 
excessive perturbation. If Astronomy had been confined to 
England, we never should have rediscovered them, even if we 
had once made out their orbits. If Astronomy had been con¬ 
fined to England, the paths of the comets would never have 
been traced, and the consequences deduced from the appear¬ 
ances of Encke’s comet, the brightest discovery of the age, 
would have been lost. While Germans, Italians, and French¬ 
men, have emulously. pushed on the theory and the observation 
of these bodies, Englishmen alone, of all the nations professing 
to support a high scientific character, have stood still.—I am 
glad to turn from this dispiriting subject. 
There are other points to which I can scarcely allude without 
introducing a degree of personality which cannot be admitted in 
a public Report. They can be understood perhaps only by those 
who know the state of observation here, and who have seen the 
interior of foreign observatories. Of the latter, I can only profess 
personally to be slightly acquainted with those of France and 
those of the North of Italy. The characteristic difference be¬ 
tween the spirit of the proceedings in England and on the Con¬ 
tinent may be stated thus.-—In England, an observer* conceives 
that he has done everything when he has made an observation. 
He thinks that the merely noting the passage of a star over 
one wire and its bisection by another, is all that can be expected 
from him; and that the use of a Table of logarithms, or any¬ 
thing beyond the very first stage of reduction, ought to be left 
to others. In the foreign observatories, on the contrary, an 
observation is considered as a lump of ore, requiring for its 
production, when the proper machinery is provided, nothing 
more than the commonest labour, and without value till it has 
been smelted. In them, the exhibition of results and the compa¬ 
rison of results with theory, are considered as deserving much 
more of an astronomer’s attention, and demanding greater exer- 
* I am far from asserting that this is the character of every English observer, 
and I am equally unwilling to point out any individual to whom it is applicable. 
My object is merely to explain what I conceive to he the kind of difference 
which exists between English observers generally and foreign observers gene¬ 
rally. 
