Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/253

 1880-1920] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 221 do not require to appeal for support to the Council of the Society, the case is different with those situated in the southern hemi- sphere. In some ways their responsibilities are greater ; they are very few in number, and the field of work open to them is an immense one, while some of them are dependent on local bodies for their very existence. This is, of course, not the case with the Cape Observatory, which as a Royal Observatory is only dependent on the Home Government, while Gill seems always to have been persona grata with the Admiralty, and to have understood the art of loosening the purse-strings. Yet even he found it on one occasion desirable to ask for the support of the Council. In 1892 he strongly urged the desirability of a Board of Visitors of the Cape Observatory being constituted, to meet once a year in London, and to consist of six members. He enlisted the sympathy of Lord Kelvin, at that time President of the Royal Society, who suggested that the Council of the R.A.S. should make a repre- sentation to the Admiralty on the subject. This was not the first time such a Board had been thought of. In consequence of the defective state of the Paramatta Observatory, Airy wrote to Sir Robert Peel in 1846 April, raising the question of a General Superintending Board for Colonial Observatories in order to maintain them in a creditable state. The Council now, in 1892 November, passed a resolution, embodying that passed by the Greenwich Board of Visitors in 1846 : that the Admiralty be urged to enlarge the powers of the Greenwich Board, extending them to the Cape Observatory by constituting a Committee (including the Astronomer Royal) to require reports from H.M. Astronomer, and making suggestions to the Government, in order to give greater unity to the work done at Greenwich and at the Cape. This was duly sent to the Admiralty with the concurrence of Lord Kelvin. Nothing had come of the proposal in 1846, and nothing came of it now ; the Admiralty replying that they did not see the use of a Board which could never visit the Observatory. Gill was, however, empowered in future to refer to the Council of the R.A.S. for its support in connection with any important proposals. Annual reports were to be prepared by him in future. The remarkably great accuracy of the heliometer observations of the minor planet Victoria in 1889 appeared to Gill to show that the time had arrived when astronomers should reconsider their methods of determining the positions of the planets. In the case of Victoria, the highest precision had only been required in the relative positions of the comparison stars to each other and of the planet to the stars. But for determining absolute positions of planets, we require in addition a fundamental system of star-