Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/273

 1880-1920] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 241 to the cost of reprinting 3, 4, and part of 5, but even then it was prohibitive. Of the papers published in these old books very few are now of great importance, but everyone fond of books hates to have gaps in a long series. One paper was, however, of first-rate importance, that of Adams on the Orbit of the Novem- ber Meteors in volume 27. In view of the expected return of the Leonids, this paper was in 1897 reprinted in volume 57, and that is probably all that will ever be reprinted. It is much more unfortunate, that during a destructive fire at Messrs. Neill & Co.'s, the Society's printers, in 1916 May, many copies of recent numbers of the Monthly Notices w^ere lost, so that there are very few copies left, particularly of volume 76, numbers 1-5. Whether a paper is to be printed in the Monthly Notices or in the Memoirs depends now almost altogether on whether the extent of tabular matter contained in it requires the quarto size or not. A troublesome relic of old times was a rule requiring a Fellow to call in person for his copy of the Memoirs or to get somebody else to call for it. Naturally people often forgot to do so within the prescribed limit of time and had to make special application to the Council before they could get their copies. The introduction of parcel post facilitated the abolition of this tiresome rule ; from 1891 the Society has paid the postage on the Memoirs, and from 1903 it has been unnecessary to apply for each volume. A more serious cause of complaint was the long delay which often occurred in publishing a paper in the Memoirs, before a number of papers sufficient to fill a volume had been collected. As an experiment, some copies of volume 47 were printed in six parts, but there was not much demand for them, and the experiment was not repeated for more then twenty years. Since 1905, however, beginning with volume 57, each paper has been printed and distributed separately with as little delay as possible. It may be said without fear of contradiction that the volumes of Memoirs published during the last fifty years are not inferior in value to the earlier volumes. And they have one advantage over those. Not one of the later volumes is partly filled with longitude determinations or results of meridian observations, which though generally printed without expense to the Society, should not have been inserted in the Memoirs. We have already mentioned when describing the Society's participation in eclipse expeditions, that arrangements were made with the Royal Society in 1898 whereby a sufficient number of copies of the eclipse reports printed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society and Philosophical Transactions, were supplied to our Society to be re-issued as appendices to the Monthly Notices and Memoirs. This arrangement was very soon extended so as 16