Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/243

 1870-80] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 211 Crawford seconded, that the debate be adjourned sine die, which after opposition from Mr. Ranyard was carried with two dis- sentients, and so the subject of the Endowment of Research passed from the purview of the Royal Astronomical Society. It is worthy of remark that Mr. Lockyer attended the ordinary meeting (which he had not done for some time) on May 13 and delivered a discourse on observations of the sun with the spectro- scope, dealing specially with the observations made at South Kensington in the previous two and a half years. In spite of the factious feeling that existed in the Society, which may be inferred from this history of the decade, and some- times showed itself by rather unseemly conduct at the meeting, a considerable amount of valuable work was done, to which the volumes of the Memoirs (37, part 2, to 44 inclusive) and Monthly Notices (30 to 39) bear witness. In the former series there are (in addition to the reference catalogue of double stars in volume 40 and the bulky Eclipse Volume) some valuable papers by Cayley and Glaisher, the " Chronology of Star Cata- logues " by Knobel, and a remarkably great number of observa- tions of double stars by various observers. In the Notices we find first many papers representing the immense amount of labour expended on the Transit of Venus. Other papers deal as usual with a variety of subjects from most branches of Astronomy. Only Astrophysics is poorly represented, owing to the almost total absence of contributions from Huggins and Lockyer. The material progress of the Society during the decade is shown by comparison of the figures in the Annual Reports of 1870 and 1880 February. In the earlier year the total number of Fellows was 512, as against 592 in 1880, the Associates numbering respec- tively 45 and 43. Of the 592, five had been members of the old Mathematical Society and paid no subscription. There is still an item in this tabular statement of the personnel of the Society headed " Non-resident Fellows." * It is a little unexpected to learn from the 1870 Report that there were at that date eleven such Fellows who must have joined the Society nearly forty years before. In 1880 the number had become reduced to four, and the last of these early Fellows died in 1885. The funded property of the Society had increased from 8400 to 13,200 (face value), and the income on the same from 237 in the 1870 account to 361 in that of 1880. In the report of the later year it is men- tioned that the Library contained about 8000 volumes, and that since the removal to Burlington House nearly 3000 of these had been bound in a substantial manner, while there remained about 1000 to be similarly treated.
 * See above, p. 80.