Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/216

 188 HISTORY OF THE [1870-80 the Eclipse Committee of the British Association for observation of the eclipse of 1871, and that the observing party in Australia had presented some instruments to Mr. Ellery, Director of the Melbourne Observatory, among them being three modern instru- ments of small value belonging to the Society. But the matter had already been dealt with by the Council, and the British Association naturally made restitution by procuring similar instruments and handing these to the Society. The activity of the Society during the first five years of the decade may be judged from the size of the volumes of the Monthly Notices. Volume 30, 1869 November to 1870 June, contains 226 pages ; volume 35, 1874 November to 1875 June, 410, whilst two of the intermediate volumes, 33 and 34, have respectively 582 and 492. The extent and number of the notes on the progress of Astronomy in the February number of the Monthly Notices may perhaps be an index of the taste and energy of the Secretaries rather than an actual record of progress ; but it is to be remarked that these notes in 1870 occupied only 15 pages, whilst in 1875 they filled 38, excluding the Reports of the Transit of Venus, but including a long Report on Meteoric Astro- nomy. The state of amateur Astronomy generally is to be judged from the reports from the private observatories that are to be found in the February numbers. Some of these were falling out of the ranks of active workers. Mr. Lassell had re-erected his 2-foot reflector at Maidenhead after his return from Malta, but did little with it after 1870. Mr. De la Rue's Observatory at Cranford, Middlesex, ceased to exist in 1873, when it was dismantled, and the large reflecting telescope and other instruments presented to the University of Oxford. Mr. Carrington had no active connection with the Society after 1865, but had built a new Observatory at Churt, near Farnham, in Surrey, of a somewhat unusual kind, described in volume 30 of the Monthly Notices^ which he did not apply to any particular purpose. The places of these older astronomers were filled by several new workers in the science. Mr. Huggins's Observatory at Tulse Hill was growing in value and importance. Mr. Lockyer had established an Observa- tory, with spectroscopic laboratory attached, in the neighbourhood of St. John's Wood, in north-west London, the principal instru- ments being a 6-inch refractor by Cooke, and a seven prism spectro- scope, the latter being replaced in 1873 by a speculum metal diffraction-grating by Rutherfurd, and with these he was observ- ing the chromosphere and prominences and sun-spots, and doing necessary comparison laboratory work on the spectra of metals. He communicated the results to the Royal Society, but a full report of the work done at his Observatory is to be found in the