appreciation of your labours. We may however add that our
position has given us opportunities of seeing that which others cannot
equally well know, the untiring energy and great industry which have
been therein displayed throughout a long and laborious career, an
energy which leads you in retirement, and at fourscore years of age,
to contemplate further scientific work.

We would ask you to carry with you into private life the best wishes
of each one of us for your future happiness, and that of your family,
expressing the hope that the days of retirement may not be few, and
assuring you that your name will long live in our remembrance.

We are, dear Sir,
Yours very faithfully,
W.H.M. CHRISTIE, EDWIN DUNKIN, WILLIAM
ELLIS, GEORGE STRICKLAND CRISWICK, W.
C. NASH, A.M.W. DOWNING, EDWARD W.
MAUNDER, W.G. THACKERAY, THOMAS LEWIS.

_Sir G.B. Airy, K.C.B., &c., &c.,
Astronomer Royal._

* * * * *

ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH,
_1881, August 13_.

MY DEAR MR CHRISTIE,
and Gentlemen of the Royal Observatory,

With very great pleasure I have received your letter of August 11. I
thank you much for your recognition of the general success of the
Observatory, and of a portion of its conduct which--as you remark--can
scarcely be known except to those who are every day engaged in it: but
I thank you still more for the kind tone of your letter, which seems
to shew that the terms on which we have met are such as leaves, after
so many years' intercourse, no shadow of complaint on any side.

Reciprocating your wishes for a happy life, and in your case a
progressive and successful one,

I am,
My dear Mr Christie and Gentlemen,
Yours faithfully,
G.B. AIRY.

* * * * *

Throughout his tenure of office Airy had cultivated and maintained the
most friendly relations with foreign astronomers, to the great
advantage of the Observatory. Probably all of them, at one time or
another, had visited Greenwich, and to most of them he was well
known. On his retirement from office he received an illuminated
Address from his old friend Otto Struve and the staff of the Pulkowa
Observatory, an illuminated Address from the Vorstand of the
Astronomische Gesellschaft a