“I cannot tell precisely in which year I introduced the following useful custom.  Towards the end of each year I procured a pocket-book for the following year with a space for every day, and carefully examining all the sources of elements of observations, and determining the observations to be made every day, I inserted them in the pocket-book.  This system gave wonderful steadiness to the plan of observations for the next year.  The system has been maintained in great perfection at the Observatory of Greenwich. (The first of these pocket-books which Prof.  Adams has found is that for 1833.) Printed skeleton forms were introduced for all calculations from 1828.  In the Greenwich Observatory Library there is a collection, I believe complete, of printed papers commencing with my manifesto, and containing all Syndicate Reports except for 1833 (when perhaps there was none).  It seems from these that my first written Report on Observations, &c., was on May 30th, 1834.  The first Syndicate Report is on May 25th, 1829.”

* * * * *

A few remarks on Airy’s private life and friends during his residence at Cambridge Observatory may be here appropriately inserted.

Amid the laborious occupations recorded in the foregoing pages, his social life and surroundings appear to have been most pleasant and congenial.  At that period there were in residence in Cambridge, and particularly at Trinity, a large number of very brilliant men.  Airy was essentially a Cambridge man.  He had come up poor and friendless:  he had gained friends and fame at the University, and his whole work had been done there.  From the frequent references in after times both by him and his wife to their life at Cambridge, it is clear that they had a very pleasant recollection of it, and that the social gatherings there were remarkably attractive.  He has himself recorded that with Whewell and Sedgwick, and his accomplished sisters-in-law, who were frequently on long visits at the Observatory, they formed pretty nearly one family.

His friendship with Whewell was very close.  Although Whewell was at times hasty, and rough-mannered, and even extremely rude, yet he was generous and large-minded, and thoroughly upright. [Footnote:  The following passage occurs in a letter from Airy to his wife, dated 1845, Sept. 17th:  “I am sorry that ——­ speaks in such terms of the ‘Grand Master,’ as she used to be so proud of him:  it is only those who have well gone through the ordeal of quarrels with him and almost insults from him, like Sheepshanks and me, that thoroughly appreciate the good that is in him:  I am sure he will never want a good word from me.”] In power of mind, in pursuits, and interests, Airy had more in common with Whewell than with any other of his friends.  It was with Whewell that he undertook the experiments at Dolcoath:  it was to Whewell that he first communicated the result of his remarkable investigation