136 
HISTORY OF THE 
[1860-70 
piece of work in its relation to astronomical progress ; and thirdly, 
the Obituary Notices, affording generally a still more distant 
judgment of the contributions of individual workers. Indeed, the 
abundance of records is in some ways even an embarrassment ; 
for the compiler is in danger of becoming interested in points on 
which he feels he should enlighten his own ignorance. Effort has 
been made as far as possible to let the records speak for themselves, 
and tell the tale of the decade. 
After these introductory remarks we take up the true theme 
of this chapter, the history of the Society in this last decade of 
the first half-century of its existence. 
The decade began under the presidency of the Rev. Robert 
Main, F.R.S., who had been elected in i860 February for the 
second year of his term of office. He was then completing the 
twenty-fifth year of his activities as Chief Assistant at the Royal 
Observatory, Greenwich, an office to which he had been appointed 
by Airy in 1835, when he succeeded Pond as Astronomer Royal. 
Main had been a very faithful officer of the Society, and after five 
years as one of the Honorary Secretaries, 1841-46, the Council 
made a warm acknowledgment of his services. He had contri 
buted many important papers to the Memoirs, and the value of 
those contributions to the promotion of Astronomy had been 
recognised by the Society in the award of the Gold Medal to him 
in 1858. Main was evidently greatly respected by his contem 
poraries as one who, quite apart from his devotion to his own 
immediate work, spared himself no trouble in arriving at sound 
judgments of the value of astronomical investigations within his 
cognisance. He delivered three addresses in setting forth the 
grounds of the award of the Gold Medal in successive years; firstly, 
to Carrington, for his Redhill Catalogue of stars within 10 0 of the 
Northern Pole of the heavens ; secondly, to Hansen, for his Lunar 
Tables ; and thirdly, to Goldschmidt, for his discoveries of thirteen 
small planets. 
Main’s address in i860 on Hansen’s Lunar Tables was a long 
one ; and it has a special value. It gives both a summary of the 
early work on lunar observations and theory, and also a weighty 
indication of the contemporaneous view of the great value of 
Hansen’s work. 
Main’s third address, in 1861, on Goldschmidt’s discoveries 
of minor planets, reminds us of the value of work done by an 
amateur in another country. Goldschmidt was an artist living in 
Paris, and had passed the age of forty-five before the accident of 
hearing a lecture at the Sorbonne by Le Verrier, in which he called 
attention to an eclipse of the moon that was to occur on the same 
evening, aroused in him an enthusiasm for astronomical study.