Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/257

 1880-1920] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 225 In this connection we may mention another case, where the Society threw its influence in the scales to further the promotion of an object associated with Geodesy. In 1903 March, Chandler addressed a letter to the Council, urging the desirability of estab- lishing a southern belt of stations for the observation of variation of latitude. The Observatories at Sydney and the Cape being almost in the same latitude (differing only 4') would furnish two stations for the investigation of Kimura's term, while a third one should be set up thirty miles south of Santiago.* The Council at once declared themselves much impressed with the importance of establishing a belt of southern latitude stations for two years. It appears, however, that the Central International Geodetic Bureau had already in 1896, six years before Mr. Kimura announced his new term, recommended that latitude observations be made on the parallel of Sydney. Eventually two stations were set up on the parallel 3i55', in West Australia and the Argentine. Nearly at the end of the first century of its existence the Council was called upon to give an opinion on a subject of great importance, the commencement of the astronomical day. It was not the first time that this question had been laid before them. Since the days of Ptolemy astronomers had counted their day from noon, without the rest of the world being aware, that here was an intolerable grievance which ought to be redressed. But at the Washington Prime Meridian Conference in 1884 it was resolved among other things, " almost without debate, certainly without adequate consideration," says Newcomb, f that the astronomical day ought to begin at midnight like the civil one. This resolution, however, met with very little support outside the Conference. In a paper printed in the Monthly Notices in the fol- lowing January, Newcomb expressed himself very strongly against the proposed change, chiefly on account of the discontinuity it would introduce into astronomical tables and ephemerides,{ and at the Geneva meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft in 1885 August he did the same. As he was Editor of the American Ephemeris, his vote was of great practical importance, apart from the weight any utterance of his would naturally carry. Of prominent Continental astronomers, Otto Struve and Oppolzer || seem to have been the only ones in favour of the proposed change. The matter came before the Council of our Society in 1885 June, when a letter from the Science and Art Department was read, J M .N., 44, 122. Vierteljahrsschrift d. a. G., 20, 228. 15
 * M.N., 63, 294. f Reminiscences of an Astronomer, p. 227.
 * M.N., 44, 295-