Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/212

 184 HISTORY OF THE [1870-80 Mr. Dunkin offered to undertake the duties of Editor until after the next Annual General Meeting. At this meeting also a letter was received from the Hydrographer, Admiral Richards, com- plaining of the paragraph in Mr. Proctor's paper in the supple- mental y number. The Council expressed their regret in a letter to Admiral Richards, that the Editor should have so misused his office, and in the next issue of the Monthly Notices (1873 November) the following note was inserted by special order of the Council : The attention of the Council has been directed to certain remarks made by their late Editor in paragraph 2, page 533 of the supplementary number, volume xxxiii. of the Monthly Notices. The Council have entered on their Minutes a resolution expressing their strong disapprobation of the paragraph referred to. Mr. Proctor sent a letter from New York in December, expressing regret for the circumstances which led to the appearance of his paper on the transit in the supplementary number, and saying that if he had known earlier of the arrangements described by Sir George Airy at the November meeting, * the paper would not have appeared, and that he had not definitely proposed the occupation of any specified southern stations, but merely a search for such stations in due time. This was read as a paper at the meeting of the Society in 1874 January. A letter from him in The Times of February 6, dated from New York, January 16, criticising the Council's note in the November number, spoke of his paragraph in the supplementary number as " a carelessly worded jest." Mr. Proctor attended the meeting on 1874 May 8, and read an explana- tion, Sir George Airy, as Vice-President, being in the Chair, f Mr. Proctor contributed occasional papers in later years, and was sometimes present at the meetings, but did not take an active part in the affairs of the Society, being engaged in writing and lecturing at home and abroad. For the actual observation of the transit, the Astronomer Royal collected a body of observers from the naval and military services, with some civilians, who received instruction at the Royal Obser- vatory in the practical details of observation and photography, several of whom became Fellows of the Society. The observing parties started to take up their stations in the early part of the tions for observation of the Transit in which he said that a photographic station was to be established in the north of India, and that he had carefully considered the propriety of establishing an additional station on Kerguelen Island or on the Macdonald or Heard Islands, on the suitability of which the Challenger was to report. t Mr. Proctor's explanation or apology was not received as a paper, but was printed as a fly-leaf, with a footnote, "To be added to Vol. xxxiii."
 * At this meeting the Astronomer Royal gave an account of the prepara-