received as Member of the Board of Longitude, and to the profits of Lectures.  I wrote him a note, telling him that I had most certain information of the intention to dissolve the Board of Longitude (which was done in less than six months), and that by two years’ Lectures I had gained L45 (the expenses being L200, receipts L245).  This letter was sent to the complaining people, and no more was said.  By the activity of Sheepshanks and the kindness of Dr Davy the business gradually grew into shape, and on Mar. 21st a Grace passed the Senate for appointing a Syndicate to consider of augmentation.  Sheepshanks was one of the Syndicate, and was understood to represent, in some measure, my interests.  The progress of the Syndicate however was by no means a straightforward one.  Members of the Senate soon began to remark that before giving anything they ought to know the amount of the University revenue, and another Syndicate was then appointed to enquire and report upon it.  It was more than a year before my Syndicate could make their recommendation:  however, in fact, I lost nothing by that delay, as I was rising in the estimation of the University.  The Observatory house was furnished, partly from Woodhouse’s sale, and partly from new furniture.  My mother and sister came to live with me there.  On Mar. 15th 1828 I began the Observatory Journal; on Mar. 27th I slept at the Observatory for the first time, and on Apr. 15th I came to reside there permanently, and gave up my college rooms.”

CHAPTER IV.

AT CAMBRIDGE OBSERVATORY.  FROM HIS TAKING
CHARGE OF THE CAMBRIDGE OBSERVATORY TO HIS
RESIDENCE AT GREENWICH OBSERVATORY AS ASTRONOMER
ROYAL.

FROM MARCH 15TH 1828 TO JAN. 1ST 1836.

1828

“I attended a meeting of the Board of Longitude on Apr. 3rd.  And again on June 4th; this was the last meeting:  Sheepshanks had previously given me private information of the certainty of its dissolution.—­On Apr. 4th I visited Mr Herschel at Slough, where one evening I saw Saturn with his 20-foot telescope, the best view of it that I have ever had.—­In June I attended the Greenwich Observatory Visitation.—­Before my election (as Plumian Professor) there are various schemes on my quires for computation of transit corrections, &c.  After Apr. 15th there are corrections for deficient wires, inequality of pivots, &c.  And I began a book of proposed regulations for observations.  In this are plans for groups of stars for R.A. (the Transit Instrument being the only one finished):  order of preference of classes of observations:  no reductions to be made after dinner, or on Sunday:  no loose papers:  observations to be stopped if reductions are two months in arrear:  stars selected for parallax.—­The reduction of transits begins on Apr. 15th.  On May 15th Mr Pond sent me some moon-transits to aid in determining my longitude.—­Dr Young, in a letter to me of May 7th, enquires whether I will accept a free admission to the Royal Society, which I declined.  On May 9th I was elected to the Astronomical Society.—­Towards the end of the year I observed Encke’s Comet:  and determined the latitude of the Observatory with Sheepshanks’s repeating circle.—­On my papers I find a sketch of an Article on the Figure of the Earth for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.