1870-80] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 
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the south coast of Spain, Sicily, and the north coast of Africa, 
and it was proposed to repeat the experience of the eclipse of i860, 
when the Admiralty provided a ship to convey an expedition to 
a convenient spot for observation. At the meeting in March, 
Mr. G. F. Chambers,* asked whether the Government proposed to 
help astronomers in going out to Spain to observe the eclipse. 
He was told that the Government did not propose to do anything 
of the kind, but that the Council were prepared to lay before the 
authorities a statement of the required observations, and to 
urge the necessity for some assistance.f The Council had on that 
day resolved itself into a Committee to consider the preparations 
necessary, and in the following month a Committee of the Society 
united itself with a Committee of the Royal Society appointed for 
the same purpose, Professor Stokes being Secretary of the joint 
body. The Society voted the sum of £250 towards the expenses, 
to which the Royal Society added an equal sum. The Astronomer 
Royal, as spokesman for the two Societies, asked the Admiralty 
to supply two ships, one to take observers to Spain, the other to 
Syracuse in Sicily; but the application was not acceded to, and a 
further application was therefore made to the Treasury. It was 
not until the day of the November meeting (the nth) that the 
Committee were able to count on any help from the Government, 
and it appears that this help was given, after a previous definite 
refusal, by reason of the intervention of Mr. Lockyer who 
explained the necessity to the officials concerned. The use 
of H.M.S. Urgent was granted to carry observers to Spain, 
and the sum of £2000 was contributed by the Treasury towards 
the expenses. An organising Committee was appointed, of which 
Mr. Norman Lockyer was Secretary, and Mr. Ranyard, Assistant 
Secretary. 
The first-named has already been mentioned. He was at this 
time a clerk in the War Office, but was already famous in the 
astronomical world for his solar spectroscopic researches, and 
specially for his suggestion, made in 1866 , and his discovery in 
1868 of the method of observing prominences at times other 
than when the sun is eclipsed, the credit for which is shared 
with M. Janssen. Mr. A. C. Ranyard, who was a prominent 
figure in the affairs of the Society later on, had joined the Society 
in 1863 at the age of eighteen, before proceeding to Cambridge, 
and at this time was reading for the Bar. 
* An amateur astronomer who joined the Society in 1864, and the author 
of a well-known book, Handbook of Descriptive Astronomy. 
f A circular (printed in the Monthly Notices for 1870 April) was sent by 
direction of the Council to all Fellows of the Society, inviting those who were 
willing to take part in the eclipse observations to send their names to the 
Secretaries. It appears that fifty or sixty volunteered in response.