Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/159

 1860-70] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 135 were better reported, and are often interesting as the only record available. The editor seems frequently to have had considerable difficulty in satisfying the desires of all his various readers with regard to the correspondence admitted to his columns. The great contro- versy about the lunar rotation, in which Henry Perigal was one of the protagonists, went on for months with persistent reiteration of misunderstandings. Even Augustus De Morgan was drawn into it, and he was reproached by one of the correspondents for that in answer to a demand for a proof of rotation, he intimated that a proof demands a capacity for the reception of proof. The pages of the Register bear testimony to the interest taken in a wide circle of amateur observers in such debated matters as the question of variation in the lunar crater Linne, when Schmidt, of Athens, called attention to it ; and the telescopic appearances presented by the sun's surface when Nasmyth announced his view of interlacing willow leaves, and a fierce battle arose as between granules, soapsuds, and even cauliflower heads. There can be no doubt that the Register was very welcome to many observers who desired to have their work usefully directed. It became a means of publication of the earliest reports of the Observing Astronomical Society, which was started in 1869 under the keen Secretaryship of Mr. W. F. Denning, who was then in his twenty-first year. In the following year the Society contained forty-six members, and it may be regarded as an early forerunner in an aim which later found a really fine fulfilment in the founda- tion of the British Astronomical Association in 1890. The Rev. J. C. Jackson became editor of the Register in 1872, when Gorton's health failed. The publication was continued to 1886 December, and volume 24 was completed with the shortest editorial note, " Finis, Valete." In the attempt to prepare a chapter of history like the present, a feature that strikes the compiler is the great value of the records stored up each year in the Annual Reports of the Council. The Addresses of the Presidents in the awards of the medal, the Council Notes on Points of Interest, and the Obituary Notices, all combine to present a view of the activities of any epoch in a way that is rendered all the more valuable, inasmuch as the part played by any particular research or by any individual is presented at diff- erent times, and thus our final view of it is modified by the very fact that we have, firstly, the Note calling contemporaneous attention to a point of fresh interest and importance ; secondly, possibly an Address setting forth a later view of a specially selected