Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/197

 1870-80] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 169 the south coast of Spain, Sicily, and the north coast of Africa, and it was proposed to repeat the experience of the eclipse of 1860, when the Admiralty provided a ship to convey an expedition to a convenient spot for observation. At the meeting in March, Mr. G. F. Chambers,* asked whether the Government proposed to help astronomers in going out to Spain to observe the eclipse. He was told that the Government did not propose to do anything of the kind, but that the Council were prepared to lay before the authorities a statement of the required observations, and to urge the necessity for some assistance.f The Council had on that day resolved itself into a Committee to consider the preparations necessary, and in the following month a Committee of the Society united itself with a Committee of the Royal Society appointed for the same purpose, Professor Stokes being Secretary of the joint body. The Society voted the sum of 250 towards the expenses, to which the Royal Society added an equal sum. The Astronomer Royal, as spokesman for the two Societies, asked the Admiralty to supply two ships, one to take observers to Spain, the other to Syracuse in Sicily ; but the application was not acceded to, and a further application was therefore made to the Treasury. It was not until the day of the November meeting (the nth) that the Committee were able to count on any help from the Government, and it appears that this help was given, after a previous definite refusal, by reason of the intervention of Mr. Lockyer who explained the necessity to the officials concerned. The use of H.M.S. Urgent was granted to carry observers to Spain, and the sum of 2000 was contributed by the Treasury towards the expenses. An organising Committee was appointed, of which Mr. Norman Lockyer was Secretary, and Mr. Ranyard, Assistant Secretary. The first-named has already been mentioned. He was at this time a clerk in the War Office, but was already famous in the astronomical world for his solar spectroscopic researches, and specially for his suggestion, made in 1866, and his discovery in 1868 of the method of observing prominences at times other than when the sun is eclipsed, the credit for which is shared with M. Janssen. Mr. A. C. Ranyard, who was a prominent figure in the affairs of the Society later on, had joined the Society in 1863 at the age of eighteen, before proceeding to Cambridge, and at this time was reading for the Bar. of a well-known book, Handbook of Descriptive Astronomy. t A circular (printed in the Monthly Notices for 1870 April) was sent by direction of the Council to all Fellows of the Society, inviting those who were willing to take part in the eclipse observations to send their names to the Secretaries. It appears that fifty or sixty volunteered in response.
 * An amateur astronomer who joined the Society in 1864, and the author