Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/161

 i86o- 7 o] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 137 Two years later we learn, with the proceeds of the sale of one of two copies he had made at Florence of a portrait of Galileo, he procured a small telescope of about two inches aperture. With the help of the Berlin Star Charts he discovered his first small planet in 1852, and Arago named it Lutetia. With slightly increased telescopic power, in the next nine years he had discovered twelve or thirteen more. He was elected an Associate in 1866, and died only a few months later at Fontainebleau. The rapid increase in the number of discoveries of minor planets led to an agreement in 1863 between the Observatories of Greenwich and Paris for a distribution of the labour of the meridional observations of these small bodies. The agreement took a peculiar form, which was determined by the obligation of the Royal Observatory to maintain meridional observations of the moon, a matter which had always been of high importance in the responsibilities of Greenwich. Airy and Le Verrier arranged to divide the additional labour of observations of the planets, by the agreement that the Observatory of Paris should undertake them from full moon to new moon, the Observatory of Greenwich remaining charged with those from new moon to full moon. Then was inaugurated what has been claimed as the first specific plan of co-operation among astronomers. In the following year the Director of the National Observatory, Washington, also promised to co-operate in the observations. Early in 1861 the Treasurer, Whitbread, had called the atten- tion of the Council to the fact that the yearly expenditure had exceeded the annual income by over 200. A Committee was appointed at once to examine into the general subject of the in- come and expenditure of the Society. They proceeded in the most business-like fashion to their task, and drew up a valuable report. It appeared from it that the average expenditure of the preceding four years had been about 60 in excess of the average income, which was increasing only at the rate of about 18 a year. The adverse balances were ascribed as principally due to the growth of the bills for printing. With respect to the treatment of corn- pounders' fees, the Committee pointed out that : By a minute of Council, March 1820, it was resolved that all compositions should be funded, and the interest of the fund alone treated as income. By the minute of June 1828, it was recommended that on the decease of any compounder his composition should, if needful, be made available for general purposes, but that the permanent fund should never be reduced below an amount equal to the product of 21 by the number of surviving compounders.