Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/49

 3 o] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 33 Sniadecki remained Rector of the University until 1815 and Director of the Observatory until 1825. He increased the value of this Observatory by importing many new instruments.* After Sniadecki, his disciple, Pietr Slawinski, took his chair and the direction of the Observatory. He made many observations. Among other things he determined the latitude of the Observatory ( = 54 40' 59"'i), and we find this value in contemporary astro- nomical almanacs. He also took share in geodetical measurements. In 1828 he published a handbook on theoretical and practical Astronomy. In 1832 the Russian Government closed the Univer- sity, but the Observatory remained and was entrusted to the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. . . . Slawinski retired in 1843. ... In 1876 a fire broke out in the Observatory and caused some damage ; then the Government closed the Observatory and gave its instruments and most of the valuable library to the Observatory of Pulkowa. If we may venture a little outside the original list, it is worthy of remark that the Society seems to have owed a good deal in its early years to explorers and travellers, like Franklin and Parry. Franklin was away at the actual time of the foundation on his " Voyage of Discovery to the Northern Coast of America " (1819- 22), but he seems to have joined almost immediately he returned, for he is entered in the Treasurer's Index as having compounded. Parry is entered as " non-resident," and, indeed, he was away on two voyages in 1819-20 and in 1821-23. We have the accounts of these in our library, but apparently not that of Franklin : yet his adventures in America and those of his companions remind us no less than those of Francis Baily how much has happened in the intervening century. We venture on one sentence from Franklin's book : Hepburn having shot a partridge, which was brought to the house, the Doctor tore out the feathers, and having held it to the fire a few minutes, divided it into seven portions ; each piece was ravenously devoured by my companions, as it was the first morsel of flesh any of us had tasted for thirty-one days, during which they had been feeding on lichen scratched off the rocks. We may also note the instructions given to Captain Basil Hall and other navigators in the first year of the Society's existence. Another figure associated with these adventurous days was that of the Rev. George Fisher, who was appointed astronomer to the expeditions which set out for the Arctic in 1818, to make pendulum there in order to see some object through Herschel's telescopes. " He was a very silent man " (Memoir of Caroline Herschel, p. 75). 3
 * Sniadecki was in England in 1787, went to Slough and took lodgings