“The Report to the Board of Visitors opens with the following paragraph:  ’In recording the proceedings at the Royal Observatory during the last year, I have less of novelty to communicate to the Visitors than in the Reports of several years past.  Still I trust that the present Report will not be uninteresting; as exhibiting, I hope, a steady and vigorous adherence to a general plan long since matured, accompanied with a reasonable watchfulness for the introduction of new instruments and new methods when they may seem desirable.’—­Since the introduction of the self-registering instruments a good many experiments had been made to obtain the most suitable light, and the Report states that ’No change whatever has been made in these instruments, except by the introduction of the light of coal-gas charged with the vapour of coal-naptha, for photographic self-registration both of the magnetic and of the meteorological instruments....  The chemical treatment of the paper is now so well understood by the Assistants that a failure is almost unknown.  And, generally speaking, the photographs are most beautiful, and give conceptions of the continual disturbances in terrestrial magnetism which it would be impossible to acquire from eye-observation.’  —­Amongst the General Remarks of the Report it is stated that ’There are two points which have distinctly engaged my attention.  The first of these is, the introduction of the American method of observing transits, by completing a galvanic circuit by means of a touch of the finger at the instant of appulse of the transiting body to the wire of the instrument, which circuit will then animate a magnet that will make an impression upon a moving paper.  After careful consideration of this method, I am inclined to believe that, in Prof.  Mitchell’s form, it does possess the advantages which have been ascribed to it, and that it may possess peculiar advantages in this Observatory, where the time-connection of transits made with two different instruments (the Transit and the Altazimuth) is of the highest importance....  The second point is, the connection of the Observatory with the galvanic telegraph of the South Eastern Railway, and with other lines of galvanic wire with which that telegraph communicates.  I had formerly in mind only the connection of this Observatory with different parts of the great British island:  but I now think it possible that our communications may be extended far beyond its shores.  The promoters of the submarine telegraph are very confident of the practicability of completing a galvanic connection between England and France:  and I now begin to think it more than possible that, within a few years, observations at Paris and Brussels may be registered on the recording surfaces at Greenwich, and vice versa.’—­Prof.  Hansen was engaged in forming Lunar Tables from his Lunar Theory, but was stopped for want of money.  On Mar. 7th I represented this privately to Mr Baring, First Lord of the Admiralty; and on Mar. 30th I wrote