this up by a formal application for an increase, which created not a little commotion at the time, the action being so unprecedented; and after a delay of a little over a year he obtained what he had asked for. The delay gave rise, however, to the remark of a local wit, that the University had given 'to Airy, nothing, a local habitation and a name.' [Illustration: GEORGE BIDDELL AIRY.] The seven years which he spent in the Cambridge Observatory were the best possible preparation for that greater charge which he was to assume later. When he entered on his duties the Observatory had been completed four years, but no observations had been published; there was no assistant, and the only instruments were a couple of good clocks and a transit instrument. But Airy set to work at once with so much energy that the observations for 1828 were published early in the following year, and he had very quickly worked out the best methods for correcting and reducing his observations. In 1829 an assistant was granted to him, in 1833 a second, and in the latter year Mr. Baldrey, the senior assistant, observed about 5000 transits, and Mr. Glaisher, the junior, about the same number of zenith distances. A syndicate had been appointed at Cambridge for the purpose of visiting the Observatory once in each term, and making an annual report to the senate. A smaller-minded and less acute man than Airy might have resented such an arrangement. He, on the contrary, threw himself heartily into it, and made such formal written reports to the syndicate as best helped them in the performance of their duty, and at the same time secured for the Observatory the support and assistance which from time to time it required. On his appointment to Greenwich, he at once entered into the same relations to the Board of Visitors of that Observatory, and from that time forth the friction that had occasionally existed between the Board and the Astronomer Royal in the past entirely ceased. The Board was henceforth no longer a body whose chief function was to reprove, to check, or to quicken the Astronomer Royal, but rather a company of experts, before whom he might lay the necessities of the Observatory, that they in turn might present them to the Government. Such representations were not likely to be in vain. For, as Mr. Sheepshanks has left on record--