representation on these subjects, which was adopted and presented to the Government. It was entirely successful, and the Maps were in future furnished with latitude and longitude lines.--I was elected President of the Royal Astronomical Society on Feb. 9th.--In June I went with Sheepshanks to see some of the operation of measuring a Base on Salisbury Plain. The following extract from a letter to his wife dated 1849, June 27th, relates to this expedition: 'In the morning we started before eight in an open carriage to the Plain: looking into Old Sarum on our way. The Base is measured on what I should think a most unfavourable line, its north end (from which they have begun now, in verification of the old measure) being the very highest point in the whole plain, called Beacon Hill. The soldiers measure only 252 feet in a day, so it will take them a good while to measure the whole seven miles. While we were there Col. Hall (Colby's successor) and Yolland and Cosset came.'" Of private history: "I made short visits to Playford in January, April and July. From July 28th to Sept. 12th I made an expedition with my wife to Orkney and Shetland.--From Dec. 24th to 26th I was at Hawkhurst, on a visit to Sir John Herschel." 1850 "The Report to the Board of Visitors opens with the following paragraph: 'In recording the proceedings at the Royal Observatory during the last year, I have less of novelty to communicate to the Visitors than in the Reports of several years past. Still I trust that the present Report will not be uninteresting; as exhibiting, I hope, a steady and vigorous adherence to a general plan long since matured, accompanied with a reasonable watchfulness for the introduction of new instruments and new methods when they may seem desirable.'--Since the introduction of the self-registering instruments a good many experiments had been made to obtain the most suitable light, and the Report states that 'No change whatever has been made in these instruments, except by the introduction of the light of coal-gas charged with the vapour of coal-naptha, for photographic self-registration both of the magnetic and of the meteorological instruments.... The chemical treatment of the paper is now so well understood by the Assistants that a failure is almost unknown. And, generally speaking, the photographs are most beautiful, and give conceptions of the continual disturbances in terrestrial magnetism which it would be impossible to acquire from eye-observation.' --Amongst the General Remarks of the Report it is stated that 'There are two points which have distinctly engaged my attention. The first of these is, the introduction of the American method of observing transits, by completing a galvanic circuit by means of a touch of the finger at the instant of appulse of the transiting body to the wire of the instrument, which circuit will then animate a magnet that will make an impression upon a moving paper.