Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/258

 226 HISTORY OF THE [1880-1920 stating that the Committee of Council on Education had asked a Committee (including Adams, Christie, and Hind) to advise them. In accordance with the recommendations of this Committee a copy of the resolutions of the Washington Conference was now forwarded, " which My Lords consider to commend themselves for adoption." It was resolved on the motion of Christie that the Council of the R.A.S. concurred in those resolutions, and proposed that the change be adopted in the Nautical Almanac for 1890.* But the opposition had been too strong, and it was probably realised that no other ephemeris would follow the example of the Nautical Almanac. The matter was therefore dropped and nothing more was heard of it for many years. In 1917 attention was again drawn to the fact that the system hitherto in use was by many sailors found to be a fruitful source of error, and in 1918 January the Admiralty addressed a letter to the Society, requesting them to ascertain the views of astronomers about changing the commencement of the astronomical day. A Committee was appointed and reported in the following Novem- ber. Of seventeen replies received to a circular, nine were decidedly in favour of the change, three decidedly against it, five not very decided. A specially important favourable reply had been re- ceived from the American Astronomical Society, who had consulted four observatories and eighteen individuals ; the result was three votes to one in favour of the change. The Committee recommended the .change to be made in the Nautical Almanac from 1925, and their Report was adopted by the Council. The Admiralty have accepted this decision, and as the Connaissance des Temps and the American Ephemeris will make the change from the same date, astronomers are now committed to this innovation, for better for worse. Among undertakings which have to be carried out by inter- national co-operation, the cataloguing of scientific literature must of necessity be one, on account of the enormous mass of papers published annually. In 1895 December the Royal Society in- formed the R.A.S. Council that they had been requested by their International Catalogue Committee to arrange that each paper in the Philosophical Transactions and Proceedings should be accompanied by a statement of its contents, which would serve for use in the preparation of a subject-index. This plan was never adopted by our Society, but correspondence on the subject was carried on from time to time with the Royal Society. [At given) : "I hope you will succeed in having its adoption postponed until 1900, and when 1900 comes, I hope you will further succeed in having it again postponed until the year 2000." (Newcomb, Reminiscences, p. 227).
 * Airy apparently did not concur, as he wrote to Newcomb (no date