When Bradley went to Greenwich, in June 1742, he was at first unable to do much from the wretched state in which he found the instruments. Halley was not a good observer: his heart was not in the work, and he had not taken the trouble to set the instruments right when they went wrong. The counterpoises of that instrument which ought to have been the best in the world at the time rubbed against the roof so that the telescope could scarcely be moved in some positions: and some of the screws were broken. There was no proper means of illuminating the cross-wires, and so on. With care and patience Bradley set all this right, and began observations. He had the good fortune to secure the help of his nephew, John Bradley, as assistant, and the companionship seems to have been as happy as that previous one of James Bradley and his uncle Pound. John Bradley was able to carry on the observations when his uncle was absent in Oxford, and the work the two got through together in the first year is (in the words of Bradley's biographer Rigaud) "scarcely to be credited." The transit observations occupy 177 folio pages, and no less than 255 observations were taken on one night. And at the same time, it must be remembered, Bradley was still carrying on his nutation observations at Wansted, still lecturing at Oxford, and not content with all this, began a course of experiments on the length of the seconds' pendulum. Truly a giant for hard work! [Sidenote: New instruments.] But, in spite of his care in setting them right, the instruments in the Observatory were found to be hopelessly defective. The history of the instruments at the Royal Observatory is a curious one. When Flamsteed was appointed the first Astronomer Royal he was given the magnificent salary of £100 a year, and no instruments to observe with. He purchased some instruments with his own money, and at his death they were claimed by his executors. Hence Halley, the second Astronomer Royal, found the Observatory totally unprovided in this respect. He managed to persuade the nation to furnish the funds for an equipment; but Halley, though a man of great ability in other ways, did not know a good instrument from a bad one; so that Bradley's first few years at the Observatory were wasted owing to the imperfection of the equipment. When this was fully realised he asked for funds to buy new instruments, and such was the confidence felt in him that he got what he asked for without much difficulty. More than £1000, a large sum for those days, was spent under his direction, the principal purchases being two quadrants for observation of the position of the stars, one to the north and the other to the south. With these quadrants, which represented the perfection of such apparatus at that time, Bradley made that long and wonderful series of observations which is the starting-point of our knowledge of the movements of the stars. The instruments are still in the Royal Observatory, the more