sea. When the office of Astronomer
Royal was established in 1765, the duty of the incumbent was declared
to be "to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the
rectifying the Tables of the Motions of the Heavens, and the places of
the Fixed Stars in order to find out the so much desired Longitude at
Sea for the perfecting the Art of Navigation."

About the middle of the last century the lunar tables were so far
improved that Dr. Maskelyne considered them available for attaining
this long-wished-for object. The method which I think was then, for the
first time, proposed was the now familiar one of lunar distances.
Several trials of the method were made by accomplished gentlemen who
considered that nothing was wanting to make it practical at sea but a
Nautical Ephemeris. The tables of the moon, necessary for the purpose,
were prepared by Tobias Mayer, of Gottingen, and the regular annual
issue of the work was commenced in 1766, as already stated. Of the
reward which had been offered, three thousand pounds were paid to the
widow of Mayer, and three thousand pounds to the celebrated
mathematician Euler for having invented the methods used by Mayer in
the construction of his tables. The issue of the Nautical Ephemeris was
intrusted to Dr. Maskelyne. Like other publications of this sort this
ephemeris has gradually increased in volume. During the first sixty or
seventy years the data were extremely meagre, including only such as
were considered necessary for the determination of positions.

In 1830 the subject of improving the Nautical Almanac was referred by
the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty to a committee of the
Astronomical Society of London. A subcommittee, including eleven of the
most distinguished astronomers and one scientific navigator, made an
exhaustive report, recommending a radical rearrangement and improvement
of the work. The recommendations of this committee were first carried
into effect in the Nautical Almanac for the year 1834. The arrangement
of the Navigator's Ephemeris then devised has been continued in the
British Almanac to the present time.

A good deal of matter has been added to the British Almanac during the
forty years and upwards which have elapsed, but it has been worked in
rather by using smaller type and closer printing than by increasing the
number of pages. The almanac for 1834 contains five hundred and
seventeen pages and that for 1880 five hundred and nineteen pages.