Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/97

 1830-40] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 79 1836.* Though seen before, they had not attracted much atten- tion, and there can be little doubt that Baily's lively account of that eclipse did a good deal to excite interest beforehand in the next total eclipse in 1842. 5. During this decade volume 4, part 2, and volumes 5 to 10 of the Memoirs were issued, giving excellent evidence of the activity of astronomers in this country, and proving the great value of the Memoirs as a medium for the publication of papers on Astronomy. Except volume 7, which contains only Baily's report on Foster's Pendulum Experiments, all the volumes contain many papers of moderate length, which in later years would have been put in the Monthly Notices. The Annual Reports of the Council are placed at the end of the volumes, and immediately before them there is (except in 7) a considerable number of observations grouped together under common headings, comets, occultations, eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, moon-culminating stars. The last men- tioned were for some years prime favourites, and occupy a good deal of space in print, until it occurred to the Council in 1838 that this was quite unnecessary, since Greenwich, Cambridge, and Edinburgh Observatories published their observations annually. The practice of publishing each volume in two separate parts was discontinued after volume 4, as the papers received steadily increased in number ; but as a year or more might often elapse between the reception of a paper and the appearance of the volume in which it was printed, arrangements were made whereby a Fellow, on depositing the estimated value of a volume with the publisher, might be furnished with each sheet as soon as it was printed. But probably very few availed themselves of this privilege. To some extent this want of rapid publication of results was rendered less harmful by the excellent and fairly detailed summaries of all papers read, which now had become a regular feature of the Monthly Notices. These were probably often furnished by the authors, but there can be no doubt that De Morgan, who was one of the Secretaries from 1831-39, deserves a considerable share of the credit of this very useful part of the Society's publications. f The Monthly Notices had steadily been growing in importance from the first day they began to appear. Started originally to furnish very sketchy " notices " of the proceedings of the Society, f Throughout his life De Morgan continued to be warmly interested in the Society and was a regular attendant at the meetings. This is the more remarkable as he never joined the Royal Society, and described himself as " not a gregarious animal." But he firmly declined the office of President, which he did not think ought to be held by a man who was not an active worker in astronomy.
 * Memoirs, 10, 1-42.