ications: On Sept. 19th I had prepared a Draft of
Agreement with the South Eastern Railway Company, to which they
agreed. In November I wrote to Sir T. Baring (First Lord of the
Admiralty) and to the Admiralty for sanction, which was given on
Dec. 18th. In December I had various communications about laying wires
through the Park, &c., &c., and correspondence about the possibility
of using sympathetic clocks: in June, apparently, I had seen
Shepherd's sympathetic clock at the Great Exhibition, and had seen the
system of sympathetic clocks at Pawson's, St Paul's Churchyard.--In
the last quarter of this year I was engaged in a series of
calculations of chronological eclipses. On Sept. 30th Mr Bosanquet
wrote to me about the Eclipse of Thales, and I urged on the
computations related to it, through Mr Breen. In October the eclipse
of Agathocles (the critical eclipse for the motion of the Moon's node)
was going on. In October Hansteen referred me to the darkness at
Stiklastad.--I went to Sweden to observe the total eclipse of July
28th, having received assistance from the Admiralty for the journeys
of myself, Mr Dunkin, Mr Humphreys and his friend, and Capt.
Blackwood. I had prepared a map of its track, in which an
important error of the _Berliner Jahrbuch_ (arising from neglect of
the earth's oblateness) was corrected. I gave a lecture at the Royal
Institution, in preparation for the eclipse, and drew up suggestions
for observations, and I prepared a scheme of observations for
Greenwich, but the weather was bad. The official account of the
Observations of the Eclipse, with diagrams and conclusions, is given
in full in a paper published in the Royal Astr. Society's
Memoirs.--This year I was President of the British Association, at the
Ipswich Meeting: it necessarily produced a great deal of business. I
lectured one evening on the coming eclipse. Prince Albert was present,
as guest of Sir William Middleton: I was engaged to meet him at
dinner, but when I found that the dinner day was one of the principal
soiree days, I broke off the engagement.--On May 26th I had the first
letter from E. Hamilton (whom I had known at Cambridge) regarding the
selection of professors for the University of Sydney. Herschel,
Maldon, and H. Denison were named as my coadjutors. Plenty of work
was done, but it was not finished till 1852.--In connection with the
clock for Westminster Palace, in February there were considerations
about providing other