Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/143

 1850-60] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 119 happiest auspices ; the Director was himself an energetic observer. The native subordinates were easily trained and most trustworthy, as indeed the experience of the Indian Survey Department had consistently proved ; the climate was good, and there was no other observatory at the same low latitude so well furnished with in- struments of power and precision. When, however, the King discovered that it was not enough to build and equip an observatory and pay an observer, but that it was also necessary to publish the results and that this publication called for an annually recurring expenditure, his interest rapidly waned, and he finally, in 1848, discharged the Director and placed the papers and instruments in the charge of a native officer who knew neither English nor astronomy. After the Mutiny, when the city was entered by the British forces, there happened to be one Fellow of the Society present with the troops, Lieut. J. F. Tennant, then a young officer on the Survey, who ultimately rose to high rank and was President in 1890-92. He was at special pains to ascertain what had happened to the observatory, and it appeared that while the structure was more or less intact, all the instruments, in fact everything of metal, had been removed, and that it was beyond hope that anything in the shape of an instrument could be recovered. The records had long since been eaten by white ants. Thus perished the Lucknow Observatory. Allusion has already been made in connection with the subject of astronomical photography to the solar eclipse of 1851 July 28. This eclipse was visible in Scandinavia at many easily accessible points, and a very large number of Fellows took advantage of the opportunity. It may fairly be said to have been the first eclipse of which extensive co-ordinated observations were attempted. The observations were necessarily confined to drawings of the corona and prominences, times of contacts, and notes of the effect upon men, animals, and birds. The Astronomer Royal was at Gottenborg in Sweden, and among others were Hind ; Dawes, a most industrious and painstaking observer, joint re-discoverer with Bond of Saturn's dusky or crape ring ; Carrington, then in charge of the University Observatory at Durham, subsequently to be famous for his long-continued series of observations of sun-spots, leading him to the discovery of their drift, or variation in apparent rotation period with the solar latitude ; Piazzi Smyth, the brilliant Astronomer Royal for Scotland; Lassell; and Dunkin of Greenwich. The eclipse was a fine one, with a remarkable hook-shaped pro- minence and a bright corona visible to a distance from the limb equal to about half the moon's diameter. The usual effects upon the animal world were noted, and the behaviour of the human spectators varied from an old lady who lit a candle to continue her work, to