Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/367

 Brisbane  from a narrow escape of shipwreck, owing to an error in taking the longitude during his voyage to the West Indies in 1795. He thereupon procured books and instruments, and made himself so rapidly and completely master of nautical astronomy, that on his return to Europe he was able to work the ship's way, and in sailing from Port Jackson to Cape Horn in 1825 predicted within a few minutes the time of making land, after a run of 8,000 miles. His observatory at Brisbane was the only one then in Scotland, except that on Garnet Hill at Glasgow. In equipment it was by far foremost, possessing a 4½-foot transit and altitude-and-azimuth instrument, both by Troughton, besides a mural circle and equatorial. With these Brisbane worked personally, and became skilled in their use.

During his Peninsular campaigns he took regular observations with a pocket-sextant, and, as the Duke of Wellington said, 'kept the time of the army.' While sheathing his sword on the evening of the battle of Vittoria he exclaimed, looking round from a lofty eminence, 'Ah, what a glorious place for an observatory!' In 1816 he was unanimously elected a corresponding member of the Paris Institute, in acknowledgment of his having ordered off a detachment of the allies reported as threatening its premises ; and in 1818 the Duke of Wellington caused some tables, computed by him for determining apparent time from the altitudes of the heavenly bodies, to be printed at the headquarters, and by the press of the army - probably a unique example of military publication. His first communication to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which had admitted him a member in 1811, was on the same subject. It was entitled 'A Method of determining the Time with Accuracy from a Series of Altitudes of the Sun taken on the same side of the Meridian' (Trans. R. Soc. Edin. viii. 497) ; and was succeeded in 1819 and 1820 by memoirs 'On the Repeating Circle,' and on a 'Method of determining the Latitude by a Sextant or Circle, with simplicity and accuracy, from Circum-meridian observations taken at Noon' (ib. ix. 97, 227).

On his appointment as governor of New South Wales in 1821, he immediately procured a valuable outfit of astronomical instruments by Troughton and Reichenbach, and engaged two skilled observers in Messrs. Rümker and Dunlop for the service of the first efficient Australian observatory. The site chosen was at Paramatta, fifteen miles from Sydney, and the building was completed (at his sole cost) and opened for regular work 2 May 1822. Before eight months had elapsed most of Lacaille's 10,000 stars had been, for the first time, reviewed (chiefly by Rümker) ; Encke's comet had been recaptured by Dunlop 2 June 1822, on its first predicted return, a signal service to cometary astronomy ; besides careful observations by Brisbane himself of the winter solstice of 1822, and the transit of Mercury, 3 Nov. 1822 (Trans. R. Soc. Edin. x. 112). A considerable instalment of results was printed at the expense of the colonial department, and formed part iii. of the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1829, but the great mass was digested into a star-catalogue by Mr. William Richardson, of the Greenwich observatory, and printed in 1835, by command of the lords of the admiralty, with the title 'A Catalogue of 7,385 Stars, chiefly in the Southern Hemisphere, prepared from Observations made 1822-6 at the Observatory at Paramatta.' The value of this collection, known as the 'Brisbane Catalogue,' was unfortunately impaired by instrumental defects. For these services Brisbane received the gold medal of the Astronomical Society, in delivering which, 8 Feb. 1828, Sir John Herschel dwelt eloquently upon his 'noble and disinterested example,' and termed him 'the founder of Australian science' (Mem. Roy. Astron. Soc. iii. 399). His observations with an invariable pendulum in New South Wales were discussed by Captain Kater in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1823. The Paramatta observatory was, soon after Brisbane's departure from the colony in 1825, transferred to the government; it was demolished in 1855, and an obelisk erected in 1880 to mark the site of the transit instrument.

After leaving New South Wales Brisbane devoted himself to scientific and philanthropic retirement, first at his seat of Makerstoun, near Kelso, and latterly at Brisbane House. Severe domestic afflictions visited him. By his marriage in 1819 with Anna Maria, heiress of Sir Henry Hay Makdougall, whose name he took in addition to his own in 1826, he had two sons and two daughters ; all at various ages died before him. Nevertheless, he did not yield to despondency. Shortly after his return to Scotland he built and equipped at large cost (for the equatorial alone he paid Troughton upwards of 600l.) an observatory at Makerstoun - the third of his foundation - and took a personal share in the observations made there down to about 1847 (Mem. Roy. Astron. Soc. v. 349 ; Monthly Notices, vii. 156, 167). To his initiative it was due that Scotland shared in the world-wide effort for the elucidation of the problems of terrestrial magnetism set an foot by Humboldt in 1837. He founded at 