year the Smith's Prizes were awarded to the 4th and 6th Wranglers. Of private history: "On Apr. 29th Mrs Smith (my wife's mother) died at Brampton.--From July 4th to Aug. 2nd I was in France (Auvergne and the Vivarais) with my two eldest sons. Maclear travelled with us to Paris.--On Dec. 23rd I went to Playford."--Antiquities and historical questions connected with military movements had a very great attraction for Airy. On his return from the expedition in France above-mentioned, he engaged in considerable correspondence with military authorities regarding points connected with the battle of Toulouse. And in this year also he had much correspondence with the Duke of Northumberland concerning his Map of the Roman Wall, and the military points relating to the same. 1860 "In June Mr Main accepted the office of Radcliffe Observer at Oxford (Mr Johnson having died) and resigned the First Assistancy at Greenwich: in October Mr Stone was appointed First Assistant.--At an adjourned Meeting of the Visitors on June 18th there were very heavy discussions on Hansen's merits, and about the grant to him. Papers were read from Sir J. Lubbock, Babbage, South, Whewell, and me. Finally it was recommended to the Government to grant _£1000_ to Hansen, which was paid to him.--In the Report to the Board of Visitors the following remark occurs: 'The apparent existence of a discordance between the results of Direct Observations and Reflection Observations (after the application of corrections for flexure, founded upon observations of the horizontal collimator wires) to an extent far greater than can be explained by any disturbance of the direction of gravity on the quicksilver by its distance from the vertical, or by the attraction of neighbouring masses, perplexes me much.'--With respect to the discordance of dips of the dipping-needles, which for years past had been a source of great trouble and puzzle, the Report states that 'The dipping-needles are still a source of anxiety. The form which their anomalies appear to take is that of a special or peculiar value of the dip given by each separate needle. With one of the 9-inch needles, the result always differs about a quarter of a degree from that of the others. I can see nothing in its mechanical construction to explain this.--Reference is made to the spontaneous currents through the wires of telegraph companies, which are frequently violent and always occur at the times of magnetic storms, and the Report continues 'It may be worth considering whether it would ever be desirable to establish in two directions at right angles to each other (for instance, along the Brighton Railway and along the North Kent Railway) wires which would photographically register in the Royal Observatory the currents that pass in these directions, exhibiting their indications by photographic curves in close juxtaposition with the registers of the magnetic elements.'--In