This great discovery gave a new and additional importance to the regular observation of the moon and planets. They were needed now, not only to assist in the practical work of navigation, but for the development of questions of pure science. Halley, the second Astronomer Royal, and Maskelyne, the fifth, devoted themselves chiefly to this department of work, to the partial neglect of the observation of the places of stars. Airy, the seventh, whilst making catalogue-work a part of the regular routine of the Observatory, developed the observation of the members of the solar system, and especially of the moon, in a most marked degree, and collected and completely reduced the vast mass of material which the industry of his predecessors had gathered. It is pre-eminently of the work of Airy that the memorable words quoted before of Professor Newcomb, the great American mathematician and astronomer, are applicable: 'that if this branch of astronomy were entirely lost, it could be reconstructed from the Greenwich observations alone.' A most important step taken by Airy was the construction of an altazimuth. An altazimuth is practically a theodolite on a large scale. Its purpose is to determine, not the declination and right ascension of some celestial body, as is the case with the transit circle, but its altitude, _i.e._ its height above the horizon, and its azimuth, _i.e._ the angle measured on the horizontal plane from the north point. The altazimuth, then, like the transit circle, consists of a telescope revolving on a horizontal axis, but, unlike the transit circle, both the telescope and the piers which carry its pivots can be rotated so as to point not merely due north and south, but in any direction whatsoever. [Illustration: AIRY'S ALTAZIMUTH.]