1820-30] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 15 
innocent of Astronomy, but they include some very respectable 
names, especially that of the Secretary :— 
Board of Longitude, 1820 
J. W. Croker, S.A. 
Jos. Banks, P.R.S. 
Davies Gilbert. 
Rob. Woodhouse. 
John Pond, Ast.R. 
A. Robertson. 
S. P. Rigaud. 
Isaac Milner. 
Samuel Vince. 
W. Lax. 
W. Ii. Wollaston. 
W. Mudge. 
Thos. Young, Secretary. 
With the rebuff encountered by the new Society in our minds, 
we read these names with surprise, and may reflect on the justice 
of the saying that a Board or Committee is apt to combine not the 
wisdom but the folly of the members, or shall we modify it by 
substituting “ not the activity but the inertia.” 
It is a pleasure to contrast the conduct of the R.A.S. Council, 
which set about calculating and printing the requisite ephemerides 
for 1823. Such work was followed up until it resulted in Baily's 
Catalogue of nearly 3000 fixed stars {Mem. R.A.S., 2 , Appendix) 
with the “ star constants ” a, b, c, d, etc., and day constants for 
every tenth day for the years 1826-30, a really magnificent achieve 
ment for a Society (indeed, almost for an individual member of 
that Society) in the face of official laxity and discouragement. 
This method of computing “ star corrections ” is now so familiar 
that we find it difficult to imagine the state of affairs before Baily 
introduced it into England and ultimately into the Nautical 
Almanac for 1834, which was “ constructed in strict conformity 
with the recommendations of the Astronomical Society of 
London ”—a great triumph for the Society, of which more will be 
said in the next chapter. Baily did not invent the method, he 
took it from Bessel and Schumacher, with a modification of his 
own for which he offers the following reason * :— 
It may be proper here to state that the values denoted in the 
present tables by A, B, C, D, are denoted by M. Schumacher C, D, 
A, B respectively. But, in the choice of characters to represent 
given quantities, it is desirable that we should, as much as possible, 
make them serve the purpose of an artificial memory. It is on this 
account that I have made A, B represent the quantity by which the 
A Berration is determined ; C the quantity by which the preCession 
is determined ; and D the quantity by which the Deviation, or 
(as it is now more generally called) the nutation, is determined. 
The reason seems a good one, and it is perhaps a pity that the 
* Mem. R.A.S., 2 , xxx, footnote.