49 
1820-30] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 
only pabulum offered to them. So please let us to some extent 
consider ourselves a power, a very modest one, confining ourselves 
merely to discriminating praise, but assuming tacitly that we can 
discriminate and that our praise is worth having. 
Thank you for your note with Babbage’s recollections. I 
have tried to do j ustice to both Pearson and Baily, but I own that 
I have leant a little against my inclinations. I wish I could have 
made out who called the first meeting on Jan. 12, 1820. Stokes 
thinks with Babbage that Baily had the principal share, and 
remembers that he proposed Danl. Moore as one of the Committee of 
eight to keep out Dr. Kelly. If so much had been discussed in 
Blackman Street before this meeting as B. supposes, I cannot 
account for not including South in the committee of eight out of 
a meeting of 14. South was not in the first Council. Hence I 
must suppose that the active discussions at Blackman Street are 
later than the foundation. Perhaps we shall get more light in time. 
Best regards to Lady H. 
Yours very dutifully, 
R. Sheepshanks. 
(2) After this chapter had been printed, Dr. Dreyer drew my 
attention to another instance of the ill-luck which befel Waterston 
(see pp. 27-28). In 1850 he published a paper “ On a Graphical 
Mode of Computing the Excentric Anomaly ” (M.N., 10 , 169). 
About fourteen years later the method was re-discovered by 
Dubois ( A.N ., 1404) and has been called by his name. The injustice 
was first noticed by T. J. J. See ( M.N ., 56 , 54). 
(3) To Dr. Dreyer I also owe a reference to Sprat’s History of 
the Royal Society , from which it appears that a complete survey of 
the sky was not contemplated for the first time in 1820 (see p. 6), 
for “ they (the R.S.) have suggested the making a perfect survey, 
map, and table of all the fixed stars within the zodiac, both visible 
to the naked eye, and discoverable by a 6-foot telescope with a 
large aperture. . . . This has been approved and begun, several 
of the Fellows having had their portions of the heavens allotted 
to them.” 
The date of Sprat’s History is 1667.