66 
HISTORY OF THE 
[1830-40 
took ten months to prepare their Report, which is printed in 
volume 5 of the Memoirs. They recommended various tables, 
including a six-figure table of logarithms, which might form a 
second part to be sold separately. It is stated in the Annual 
Report of 1833 February that the Admiralty had directed a set 
of tables to be computed in accordance with the proposal of the 
Committee, but it does not appear that a new edition was brought 
out at that time. 
Another question, about which the Society was consulted by 
the Admiralty, was whether, considering the great expense, it was 
necessary to keep up two observatories in the southern hemisphere, 
nearly on the same parallel of latitude. These were the Royal 
Observatory at the Cape and the Paramatta Observatory. The 
latter had been founded as a private observatory by Sir Thomas 
Brisbane, and was handed over to the British Government in 1826. 
The question had already been raised in 1828, when the Royal 
Society had been consulted and had asked advice from the Astro 
nomical Society. The latter had then declared the two observa 
tories to be necessary ; the Cape Observatory as being nearly on the 
same meridian as the principal observatories of Europe, and that at 
Paramatta as differing so much in longitude and climate as to be 
a useful check on the other one. It was pointed out that the 
southern heavens were very imperfectly known, and that a fixed 
station on the Australian continent would be of importance for 
geographical and hydrographic surveys. This opinion was now 
(1830 December) adhered to, and it was also pointed out that a 
great deal of money had been spent on the Cape Observatory, 
which would be wasted if it were given up. 
If economy could not be recommended on that occasion, it 
was duly taken into account in the following year when the Rev. 
T. J. Hussey asked the Admiralty for £300 or £400 to erect a 
suitable building to house his instruments at Hayes, in Kent. 
This the Council could not recommend, though they recognised 
that Hussey was an active observer, who possessed some valuable 
instruments.* 
The Admiralty was not the only Government Department 
which showed its confidence in the Council by consulting it in a 
* Hussey only communicated two short notes to the Society (M.N .,1 and 2 ), 
in the second of which he approved of Bianchini’s rotation-period of Venus of 
twenty-three days. He had a 6£-inch refractor by Fraunhofer, and was the 
only English observer who made one of the star-maps between ±15° Decl. 
published by the Berlin Academy. Hussey’s Hora XIV. was one of the 
first of the maps to be issued. He duly entered on this map a star which had 
been observed by Lalande in 1795 ; but he did not notice that the star was 
not there in 1832. It was Neptune ! Harding had done the same in 1810. 
Curiously enough, Hussey was one of the first to consider the possibility of 
finding the planet which disturbed the motion of Uranus (c/. Memoirs, 16 , 387).