238 HISTORY OF THE [1880-1920 reviewing in detail the work of the medallist, must generally be the outcome of a considerable amount of preparation on the part of the President, and it is perhaps not fair that a busy man should be expected to undertake extra work at the same time. But occasionally, when a President has something very much at heart connected with his own work, and yet perhaps not ready to be embodied in a formal paper, a second address would enable him to feel : liberavi animam meant. Special addresses have sometimes been delivered by foreign Associates. Thus in 1897, Professor Barnard crossed the Atlantic to receive the Gold Medal, but was delayed by fog till after the Annual Meeting. An informal extra meeting was therefore held on March 2 following, when Professor Barnard exhibited and explained a number of slides of planets, comets, parts of the Milky Way, etc. Ten years later, 1907 June 26, there was a Special Evening Meeting to hear another distinguished American, Professor Hale, give a lecture on " The Opportunities for Astro- nomical Work with inexpensive Apparatus." The members of the British Astronomical Association were invited. At the very end of the period we are here reviewing, on 1919 December 12, the ordinary meeting was not devoted to the reading of papers. In view of the widespread interest in the theory of relativity caused by the publication of the results of the eclipse observations, the Council thought they would meet the wishes of the Fellows by giving up the whole time of the meeting to the consideration of this subject. Addresses were delivered by Professor Eddington and Mr. Jeans, after which Sir Oliver Lodge also addressed the meeting, and a communication from Sir Joseph Larmor was read.* It was a fitting tribute to the great theory, which had been raised from the rank of an interesting hypothesis to that of an epoch-marking theory by the confirmation afforded it by experiment and observation. Apart from these special occasions all ordinary meetings con- tinue to be devoted to the reading of papers and the subsequent discussion on their contents. f This discussion is generally very interesting and often throws additional light on the subject. It is a great pity that we possess no records whatever of what happened at the meetings previous to 1862 November, when the Astronomical Register began to give short reports of the proceedings at the meetings. From that time we possess an unbroken series of accounts of these, as The Observatory, from the appearance of its
- These addresses and papers were all printed in the Monthly Notices.
j- As a rule, there are more papers sent in than can be " read " at a meeting ; but in 1887 December only two papers had been received, and neither of these was suitable for reading. This provided a rare opportunity for discussing various topics of special interest at the moment, such as curved plates, etc.
