173 
1870-80] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 
Council in November 1871, the names of Mr. Lockyer and Dr. 
Frankland were proposed as recipients by Mr. De la Rue, and 
seconded by Mr. Browning, for their joint researches in Solar 
Physics and the Spectra of Gaseous Bodies. The names of other 
astronomers were proposed, and of these Professor Schiaparelli 
was selected at the December Meeting and received the medal 
at the Annual General Meeting in 1872 February, for his Researches 
on the Connection between the Orbits of Comets and Meteors. 
Beyond the communications relating to the arrangements 
for the eclipse of 1870 and the reports of the results, there was 
rather a scarcity of papers read before the Society in the years 
1870 and 1871. Mr. Proctor was the largest contributor, and there 
are more than twenty papers by him in these two years. 
The star Eta Argus, and alleged changes in the nebula 
surrounding it, formed the subject of several communications in 
1871. A noteworthy paper by Professor Alexander Herschel 
will be found in the Monthly Notices for June of that year, which 
expounded an idea conceived by his brother, Captain Herschel, 
for the automatic registration of transits, and gives his own (Pro 
fessor A. Herschel’s) plan for carrying this out mechanically. 
The method of this apparatus is in effect precisely that of the type 
of registering transit micrometer brought into use twenty years 
later, in which the wire is moved by mechanical means, with the 
useful addition that a means was provided for the observer to 
suppress the record of a contact if he -were not satisfied that the 
coincidence of the wire and star was perfect. 
The Society lost by death three distinguished Fellows in the 
year 1871 : Sir John Herschel, Mr. Babbage, and Professor De 
Morgan, the two first-named were the last survivors of those who 
met at the Freemasons’ Tavern in 1820 January to consider the 
expediency of establishing an Astronomical Society. 
At the Annual General Meeting in 1872 February, Professor 
Cayley was elected President, Mr. Huggins retired from the 
Secretaryship, and Mr. Proctor was chosen to succeed him. 
The following session, March-June, was remarkable for a dis 
cussion, or series of discussions, in the Council. The subject found 
its way later into the public press under the heading of Government 
Aid to Science, or the Endowment of Research, and though action 
was not taken at this time, the proposal made to the Society in 
this session may be considered to have resulted in the establish 
ment of the Observatory at South Kensington, which later on 
played such a large part in the development of Astrophysics. 
The matter was initiated by Lieut.-Colonel Strange, the Foreign 
Secretary, who had been a distinguished officer of the Indian 
Trigonometrical Survey, and had retired from the army in 1861.