Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/65

 1820-30] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 49 only pabulum offered to them. So please let us to some extent consider ourselves a power, a very modest one, confining ourselves merely to discriminating praise, but assuming tacitly that we can discriminate and that our praise is worth having. Thank you for your note with Babbage's recollections. I have tried to do justice to both Pearson and Baily, but I own that I have leant a little against my inclinations. I wish I could have made out who called the first meeting on Jan. 12, 1820. Stokes thinks with Babbage that Baily had the principal share, and remembers that he proposed Danl. Moore as one of the Committee of eight to keep out Dr. Kelly. If so much had been discussed in Blackman Street before this meeting as B. supposes, I cannot account for not including South in the committee of eight out of a meeting of 14. South was not in the first Council. Hence I must suppose that the active discussions at Blackman Street are later than the foundation. Perhaps we shall get more light in time. Best regards to Lady H. Yours very dutifully, R. SHEEPSHANKS. (2) After this chapter had been printed, Dr. Dreyer drew my attention to another instance of the ill-luck which befel Waterston (see pp. 27-28). In 1850 he published a paper " On a Graphical Mode of Computing the Excentric Anomaly " (M.N., 10, 169). About fourteen years later the method was re-discovered by Dubois (A.N., 1404) and has been called by his name. The injustice was first noticed by T. J. J. See (M.N., 56, 54). (3) To Dr. Dreyer I also owe a reference to Sprat's History of the Royal Society, from which it appears that a complete survey of the sky was not contemplated for the first time in 1820 (see p. 6), for " they (the R.S.) have suggested the making a perfect survey, map, and table of all the fixed stars within the zodiac, both visible to the naked eye, and discoverable by a 6-foot telescope with a large aperture. . . . This has been approved and begun, several of the Fellows having had their portions of the heavens allotted to them." The date of Sprat's History is 1667.