“The new line of underground telegraph wires has been completed by the officers of the General Post Office.  The new route is down Croom’s Hill in Greenwich, and the result of this change, at least as regards the earth-current wires, and probably as regards the other wires, has not been satisfactory.  It was soon found that the indications of the earth-current wires were disturbed by a continual series of petty fluctuations which almost completely masked the proper features of earth currents....  If this fault cannot be removed, I should propose to return to our original system of independent wires (formerly to Croydon and Dartford).—­The new Azimuth-mark (for the Altazimuth), upon the parapet of the Naval College, is found to be perfectly satisfactory as regards both steadiness and visibility.  The observations of a low star for zero of azimuth have been omitted since the beginning of 1881; the mark, in combination with a high star, appearing to give all that is necessary for this purpose.—­All the instruments have suffered from the congealing of the oil during the severe weather of the past winter, and very thorough cleaning of all the moving parts has been necessary.—­The Solar Eclipse of 1880, Dec. 31, was well observed.  The first contact was observed by four observers and the last contact by two.  The computations for the observations have been exceptionally heavy, from the circumstance that the Sun was very low (86 deg. 14’ Z.D. at the last observation) and that it has therefore been necessary to compute the refraction with great accuracy, involving the calculation of the zenith distance for every observation.  And besides this, eighty-six separate computations of the tabular R.A. and N.P.D. of cusps have been required.—­Amongst other interesting spectroscopic observations of the Sun, a remarkable spectrum of a sun-spot shewing 17 strong black lines or bands, each as broad as b_1, in the solar spectrum, was observed on 1880, Nov. 27 and 29.  These bands to which there is nothing corresponding in the Solar Spectrum (except some very faint lines) have also been subsequently remarked in the spectrum of several spots.—­The Police Ship ‘Royalist’ (which was injured by a collision in 1879 and had been laid up in dock) has not been again moored in the river, and the series of observations of the temperature of the Thames is thus terminated.  —­Part of the month of January 1881 was, as regards cold, especially severe.  The mean temperature of the period January 12 to 26 (15 days) was only 24.2 deg., or 14.7 deg. below the average; the temperature fell below 20 deg. on 10 days, and rose above the freezing point only on 3 days.  The highest temperature in this period was 35.3 deg., the lowest 12.7 deg..  On January 17th (while staying at Playford) my son Hubert and I noticed an almost imperceptible movement in the upper clouds from the South-East.  On that night began the terrible easterly gale, accompanied with much snow, which lasted to the night of the 18th.  The limiting pressure