77 
1830-40] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 
Of other amateurs active between 1830 and 1840 we must 
mention George Bishop, whose observatory on the Inner Circle, 
Regent’s Park, London, though started in 1836, belongs more to 
the next two decades. To Dawes, Hussey, Wrottesley, and Pearson, 
we have already alluded. There were not in those days (as there 
are now) many people deeply interested in astronomy, who, without 
possessing anything worthy of being called an observatory, yet 
owned a small telescope or two and got hold of a useful field of 
work. Very little, if any, attention was paid to variable stars ; 
and the study of the surface-markings of the planets was quite 
neglected. Of silvered-glass reflectors there were none ; and the 
possessors of small refractors did not realise that Olbers 
had never possessed anything bigger than a 3f-inch refractor (or 
“ achromatic,” as it would have been called in England), and that 
Beer’s and Madler’s map of the moon and their drawings of the 
planets were made with a telescope of a similar size. The English 
observer with small telescopes had not yet arrived on the scene, 
but when he did come, his name was to be legion. 
But a British amateur astronomer was during this decade hard 
at work making specula of as large a size as possible. William, 
third Earl of Rosse, during this decade succeeded in making 
mirrors three feet in diameter, first one cast in a number of pieces 
(mounted in 1835) and afterwards another solid one, mounted in 
1839. His further magnificent success in making a speculum of 
six feet aperture belongs to the next decade. 
Next to John Herschel, the most conspicuous of English non 
official astronomers was Francis Baily, of whom it is not too much 
to say that he was the central figure of our Society during the 
first twenty-four years of its existence. In recognition of what 
the Society owed to him, a number of Fellows subscribed in 1838 
and presented a portrait of him to the Society. It has been shown 
in the foregoing pages how he, after taking a leading part in the 
foundation of the Society, endeavoured to encourage amateur 
observers by the publication of ephemerides and tables, while he, 
after years of labour, had a principal share in the reform of the 
national ephemeris. We have also seen how he was one of the 
first to grapple successfully with the problem of forming the cor 
rections of a star’s place for aberration and nutation into simple 
formulae, and how this led him to the formation of the Society’s 
catalogue. This work on star-places led him also to prepare a 
new and corrected edition of Mayer’s catalogue. The original 
observations on which this was founded were published by the 
Board of Longitude in 1826. Baily did not reduce them anew, 
but wherever the positions differed too much from those of Bradley 
or Piazzi, he searched the observations to find the cause of the