Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/266

 258 FLAMSTEED then became one of the editors of Le Cosmos. In 1865 he was charged with the scientific de- partment of the Si&cle, and he also became known as a lecturer, an aeronaut, and an ad- vocate of spiritualism and other peculiar doc- trines. He was eventually appointed professor of astronomy at the polytechnic association, president of the meteorological society, and member of several learned bodies. His princi- pal works are : La pluralite des mondes habi- tes (1864; 15th ed., 1869); Les habitants de Vautre monde (2 vols., 1862-'3) ; Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes reels (1865 ; 8th ed., 1869); Les merveilles celestes (1865); Dieu dans la nature (1866; 6th ed., 1869); and Histoire du del (1867). Several of his works have been translated into English, including his Voyages aeriens (in Glaisher's " Travels in the Air," 1871), Recits de Vinfini (" Stories of the Infinite," by S. K. Crocker, Boston, 1873), and D Atmosphere (Paris, 1873), by 0. B. Pitman, edited by J. Glaisher (London, 1873). FLAMSTEED, John, the first English astron- omer royal, born at Denby, near Derby, Aug. 19, 1646, died in Greenwich, Dec. 31, 1719. He was educated at the free school of Derby, and at a very early age manifested a strong in- clination for astronomical studies. His health was so delicate that he was not sent to a university, but continued for several years to prosecute his astronomical researches at home with great success. In 1667 he demonstrated the true principles of the equation of time, in a tract which Dr. Wallis appended to his edition of the works of Horrocks. Flamsteed appears to have been the first astronomer who brought into common use the method of simultaneously observing the right ascension of the sun and stars, a mode- by which the true place of any star is determinable by means of meridional altitudes and transits. In 1669 he communi- cated to the royal society his calculation of a solar eclipse that had been omitted in the ephemerides for the following year, together with several other astronomical observations. In 1670 he visited London, and was introduced to the savants of the metropolis. He then en- tered Jesus college, Cambridge, and made the acquaintance of Wroe, Barrow, and Newton. In 1673 he composed his treatise on " The True and Apparent Places of the Planets when at their Greatest and Least Distance from our Earth," a work of which Newton availed him- self in his first edition of the Principia. In 1674 appeared his Ephemeris, which, with two barometers previously constructed by him, was presented by his friend Sir Jonas Moore to Charles II. and his brother the duke of York. In 1675 he was admitted to holy orders. Soon afterward, the king's attention having been called to the enormous errors of the astronom- ical tables then in use, he resolved to found an observatory, of which Flamsteed, through the mediation of Moore, was appointed the first director. The observatory was completed in 1676, but the astronomer had already entered FLANDERS on the discharge of his duties in Greenwich. The new observatory received the name of Flamsteed house. It was so inadequately sup- plied with astronomical apparatus that its prin- cipal, out of his salary of 100 a year, often not regularly paid, and his other limited re- sources, had to provide most of those instru- ments which were indispensable. Here Flam- steed composed his great work, Historia Co2- lestis, the period of whose publication forms an epoch in the annals of modern astronomy. In 1684 he was presented to the small living of Burslow in Surrey, the only ecclesiastical pre- ferment he ever obtained. Mr. Francis Baily's discovery of his papers and correspondence in 1832, published in 1835 by authority of the admiralty, has thrown much light on the his- tory of his differences with Newton and Hal- ley. These documents give us Flamsteed's ver- sion of those unseemly controversies, and it is not at all favorable to the reputation of those great masters of science ; but there is an- other account in Sir David Brewster's " Me- moirs of the Life, &c., of Sir Isaac Newton," which makes their conduct toward him appear less culpable, though neither just nor generous, than Flamsteed would lead us to suppose. His Histotia Cwlestis Britannica (3 vols. fol., Lon- don, 1725) was not published complete till after his death, though a partial edition had been issued in 1712, against his protest, by Halley, under authority of a committee com- posed of Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Christopher Wren, and others. The first volume contains his observations on the fixed stars, planets, comets, &c. ; the second, the transits of stars and planets over the meridian, with their places ; the third, an account of the methods and instruments used by Tycho Brahe and himself, and various catalogues of fixed stars, including his own catalogue of 2,934 stars. He also prepared an Atlas Coslestis, as an ac- companiment to the above work, which was published in 1729, and again in 1753. FLANDERS (Flem. Vlaenderen, Fr. Flandre), formerly a part of the Netherlands or Low Countries of western Europe, now included in Belgium, Holland (the southern part of the province of Zealand), and France (parts of the departments of Le Nord and Pas-de-Calais). Stretching along the North sea from the west- ern inlet of the Scheldt to the entrance of the straits of Dover, it was bounded N. and E. by that river and its branch the Dender, while on the south it joined the province of Artois. The name occurs for the first time in the 7th cen- tury, when Eloi, bishop of Noyon and treasurer of KingDagobertL, visited northern Neustria. By the treaty of Yerdun (843) Flanders was included in the kingdom of France, and about 20 years later it was erected into a county un- der the rule of Baldwin of the Iron Arm, son- in-law of King Charles the Bald. Baldwin's successors took rank among the six lay peers of France, and figured conspicuously in French history. His family having become extinct in