Up to Maskelyne's time the observations of the Astronomers Royal had been considered as private property; Flamsted publishing his own, while Bradley's were very liberally bought of his family, and afterwards printed by the University of Oxford. Dr. Maskelyne, on the contrary, obtained leave from the British Government to have his observations printed at the public expense under the direction of the Royal Society, who are the legal visitors of the observatory, appointed by the royal sign manual; and by thus causing the observations of the Astronomer Royal to be recorded publicly, he supplied a great want which had hitherto existed both in the English and French establishments. He also made several improvements in the arrangement and employment of the instruments used in the observatory, particularly, by enlarging the slits through which the light was admitted; by making the eyeglass of his transit telescope moveable to the place of each of the wires of the micrometer; and above all, by marking the time to tenths of a second, a refinement which had never been attempted before. Maskelyne received his doctor's degree in the year 1777, he also obtained the rare distinction of being made one of the eight foreign associates of the French Academy of Science. In consequence of an unsuccessful attempt made by Bouguer to measure the local attraction of a mountain in South America, Maskelyne determined, in 1772, to ascertain that of Schehallien in Scotland; and this latter undertaking, together with the determination of the lunar orbit from observation, and its application to navigation, may be considered as his most important contributions to the cause of science. In character Dr. Maskelyne was modest and somewhat timid in receiving the visits of strangers, but his ordinary conversation was cheerful and often playful, with a fondness for point and classical allusion. He inherited a good paternal property, and obtained considerable preferment from his college; somewhat late in life he married the sister and co-heiress of Lady Booth of Northamptonshire; his sister was the wife of Robert Lord Clive, and the mother of the Earl of Powis. Dr. Maskelyne died on the ninth of February, 1811, in his seventy-ninth year, leaving a widow and an only daughter.--_Notice sur la vie et les travaux de M. Maskelyne par Delambre._ London, 1813.--_Memoir by Dr. T. Young, Encyclopædia Britannica._ HENRY MAUDSLAY. Born Aug. 22, 1771. Died Feb. 14, 1831. This distinguished mechanical engineer was descended from an eminent Lancashire family, who trace back their origin as far as the year 1200. His father in early life enlisted in the Royal Artillery at Norwich, and afterwards became store-keeper at the Royal Dockyard of Woolwich, where his son Henry was born and spent his boyhood, acquiring in the dockyard the first rudiments of that mechanical knowledge which has since made him so justly celebrated.