On June 1st he attended the Visitation of the Royal Observatory, and moved a resolution that a Committee be appointed to consider whether any reduction can be effected in the amount of matter printed in the Volume of Observations of the Royal Observatory.  During his tenure of office he had on various occasions brought this subject before the Board of Visitors, and with his usual tenacity of purpose he now as Visitor pressed it upon their notice.—­In May he zealously joined with others in an application to get for Dr Huggins a pension on the Civil List.—­In January he prepared a short Paper illustrated with diagrams to exhibit the Interference of Solar Light, as used by him in his Lectures at Cambridge in 1836:  but it does not appear to have been published.—­In April he received a copy of a Paper by Mr Rundell, referring to the complete adoption of his system of compass correction in iron ships, not only in the merchant service, but also in the Navy.  This was a matter of peculiar gratification to Airy, who had always maintained that the method of Tables of Errors, which had been so persistently adhered to by the Admiralty, was a mistake, and that sooner or later they would find it necessary to adopt his method of mechanical correction.  The passage referred to is as follows:  “The name of Sir George Airy, the father of the mechanical compensation of the compass in iron vessels, having just been mentioned, it may not be inappropriate to remind you that the present year is the fiftieth since Sir George Airy presented to the Royal Society his celebrated paper on this subject with the account of his experiments on the ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Ironsides.’  Fifty years is a long period in one man’s history, and Sir George Airy may well be proud in looking back over this period to see how complete has been the success of his compass investigation.  His mode of compensation has been adopted by all the civilized world.  Sir William Thomson, one of the latest and perhaps the most successful of modern compass adjusters, when he exhibited his apparatus in 1878 before a distinguished meeting in London, remarked that within the last ten years the application of Sir George Airy’s method had become universal, not only in the merchant service, but in the navies of this and other countries, and added—­The compass and the binnacles before you are designed to thoroughly carry out in practical navigation the Astronomer Royal’s principles.”

1890

From May 17th to 24th he was on an expedition to North Wales, stopping at Chester, Conway, Carnarvon, Barmouth, and Shrewsbury.—­From June 18th to July 24th he was at Playford; and again from Oct. 11th to Nov. 15th.—­In this year his powers greatly failed, and he complained frequently of mental attacks, weakness of limbs, lassitude, and failure of sleep.  He occupied himself as usual with his books, papers, and accounts; and read Travels, Biblical History, &c., but nothing very persistently.