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 1860 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 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 1860 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.
