Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/144

 120 HISTORY OF THE [1850-60 fishermen who showed great terror, and to the inhabitants of one village who donned their best clothes in honour of the event. The name of Piazzi Smyth will recall an enterprise which he undertook shortly after : the transport of a telescope to the Peak of Teneriffe, and the conduct of regular observations there for many months in order to ascertain exactly what the astronomer stood to gain by elevating himself some thousands of feet. It was not for many years after this that a permanent mountain observatory was established ; but Piazzi Smyth's expedition, described as it was with all the picturesque wealth of language of which he was so well capable, must always remain memorable as the first real attempt of an astronomer to free himself from the restrictions imposed by the opacity or turbidity of our atmosphere. On the other hand, the fact, already noted, that Hind, observing in London, discovered no less than ten new minor planets would seem to indicate that even our foggy skies are not quite so antagonistic as might have been supposed to observations of the utmost delicacy. This summary, necessarily very short, and indeed almost frag- mentary, will give some indication of the major astronomical activities of the time, especially those with which our Fellows were concerned, for, as has doubtless been fully appreciated by the reader, we have paid little attention to work done or discoveries made abroad. The time was clearly one of great progress, while, as already insisted upon, it was essentially a time of transition, leading from the old astronomy of observation, the construction of star charts and catalogues, the detection of minor and the close scrutiny of the surfaces of the major planets, to physical astronomy in its new meaning inaugurated in the next decade. The general interest in astronomy, both among scientific men engaged in other lines of work and among the educated public, was very great, possibly much greater than it is at the present time. A good gauge of this is the content of the Presidential addresses delivered at the opening of the annual meetings of the British Association. In 1850, Sir D. Brewster was President, and devoted a large part of his address to our subject. He naturally dealt with the revelations of Lord Rosse's telescope, and alluded to the recent discoveries by Lassell of the satellite of Neptune and the eighth satellite of Saturn ; also to the eleven then known minor planets. The next year he was replaced by Airy, who, of course, devoted his whole address to his own beloved science. He claimed that the progress of astronomy in the past year had been very great, and among a multitude of other points dealt with the new Foucault pendulum experiment. The Belfast meeting of 1852 found Sabine President, the discoverer of the correlation between sun-spot periodicity and magnetic elements ; and in the next year