1860-70] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 135 
were better reported, and are often interesting as the only record 
available. 
The editor seems frequently to have had considerable difficulty 
in satisfying the desires of all his various readers with regard to 
the correspondence admitted to his columns. The great contro 
versy about the lunar rotation, in which Henry Perigal was one of 
the protagonists, went on for months with persistent reiteration 
of misunderstandings. Even Augustus De Morgan was drawn 
into it, and he was reproached by one of the correspondents for 
that in answer to a demand for a proof of rotation, he intimated 
that a proof demands a capacity for the reception of proof. 
The pages of the Register bear testimony to the interest taken 
in a wide circle of amateur observers in such debated matters 
as the question of variation in the lunar crater Linné, when 
Schmidt, of Athens, called attention to it ; and the telescopic 
appearances presented by the sun’s surface when Nasmyth 
announced his view of interlacing willow leaves, and a fierce 
battle arose as between granules, soapsuds, and even cauliflower 
Hotx cle. 
There can be no doubt that the Register was very welcome 
to many observers who desired to have their work usefully directed. 
It became a means of publication of the earliest reports of the 
Observing Astronomical Society, which was started in 1869 under 
the keen Secretaryship of Mr. W. F. Denning, who was then in 
his twenty-first year. In the following year the Society contained 
forty-six members, and it may be regarded as an early forerunner 
in an aim which later found a really fine fulfilment in the founda 
tion of the British Astronomical Association in 1890. 
The Rev. J. C. Jackson became editor of the Register in 1872, 
when Gorton’s health failed. The publication was continued to 
1886 December, and volume 24 was completed with the shortest 
editorial note, “ Finis, Valete.” 
In the attempt to prepare a chapter of history like the present, 
a feature that strikes the compiler is the great value of the records 
stored up each year in the Annual Reports of the Council. The 
Addresses of the Presidents in the awards of the medal, the Council 
Notes on Points of Interest, and the Obituary Notices, all combine 
to present a view of the activities of any epoch in a way that is 
rendered all the more valuable, inasmuch as the part played by 
any particular research or by any individual is presented at diff 
erent times, and thus our final view of it is modified by the very 
fact that we have, firstly, the Note calling contemporaneous 
attention to a point of fresh interest and importance ; secondly, 
possibly an Address setting forth a later view of a specially selected