Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/103

 1840-50] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 85 sent the views of each contributor in his own language, but he is careful to note that acquiescence with suggestions brought under notice is not to be implied from any silence on his part. Sheep- shanks's principal object was to assist in combining and regulating the work of British astronomers, and to publish authentic, original information respecting the progress of astronomy throughout the Empire, and admirably he did his work. Extracts from other journals such as Comptes Rendus or Astronomische Nachrichten were definitely excluded. This plan was revised, or rather confirmed, after trial, in sub- sequent years. In the Report of 1849, we read " in the Monthly Notices there is no attempt made to alter the sense of any com- munication ; if it is tolerably ingenious and not positively absurd, the substance is printed in the author's words, compressing the language as much as possible. If a paper appears unworthy of attention (and the Society receives two or three such every session) the nature of the contents is briefly reported to the Council, and a Committee is appointed, to whose judgment the paper is referred." This seems fair-minded, almost to the point of indulgence. " The lucubrations of those authors who treat every science, unknown to themselves, as a new science, and also conceive that astronomy is yet to be discovered or rather guessed, without geometry, or analysis, or dynamics, are either deposited peacefully in the archives or returned to their authors at the discretion of the Secretary." The Councils of those days, and Sheepshanks, knew as well what was what in astronomy, as any body of men that could be got together. The Society's Activities. Perhaps the first impression conveyed, on looking through these early volumes, is the dryness of the material in which our predecessors interested themselves. There was no spectroscopy, no solar physics, no photography. Variables, photometry generally, meteors, parallaxes, systematic proper motions, were all in their infancy. Geometrical and gravitational astronomy had alone attained their full growth and strength. Number after number of Monthly Notices is filled mainly with obser- vations and ephemerides of the numerous comets that were dis- covered, and in the second half of the decade, of the steadily growing family of minor planets. But it was not the view of the Society in those days that the scope was narrow. " It is obvious," wrote the Council in 1845,* " that this is a period of great activity and that all parts of practical astronomy are in full cultivation " ; and again in i848,f " at the time when this Society obtained its Charter, it was a circumstance not infrequently remarked upon that there was a comparative paucity of great things, accompanied by a constant and
 * Memoirs, 15, 407. f Ibid., 17, 135.