Prof. Airy, once elevated to that position... he for nearly ten years— — George Biddell Airy

"In the application of the ordinary principles of geometry and trigonometry to such Astronomical measures... it may sometimes be expedient to resolve the process into several successive steps, and these steps may perhaps require different kinds of treatment. But... all are simple and within ordinary comprehension, and the only complexity arises from the circumstance that the student may find it necessary to have a clear view of several such steps at once..."

"In conversing with persons who are not officially attached to Observatories or in other ways professionally cognizant of the technicalities of practical Astronomy but who nevertheless display great interest... these persons appear to regard the determination of measures like those of the distance of the Sun and Moon as mysteries beyond ordinary comprehension... [and] when persons well acquainted with the general facts of Astronomy are introduced into an Observatory, they are for the most part utterly unable to understand anything which they see... The measure of the Moons distance involves no principle more abstruse than the measure of the distance of a tree on the opposite bank of a river. The principles of construction of the best Astronomical instruments are as simple and as closely referred to matters of common school-education and familiar experience, as are those of the common globes, the steam engine, or the turning-lathe; the details are usually less complicated."

"[T]he methods used for measuring Astronomical distances are in some applications absolutely the same as the methods of ordinary -surveying, and are in other applications equivalent to them..."

"Sir George Airy has been repeatedly called into council on matters of grave difficulty by the government. He was chairman of the royal commission empowered to supervise... contriving new standards of length and of weight... He was consulted... in respect to the bewildering disturbance of the magnetic compass in iron-built ships of war. Thereupon he contrived an ingenious system of mechanical construction, through a combination of magnets and iron. ...and the system was generally adopted. He conducted the astronomical observations necessary to the drawing of the boundary-line now traceable on the map of the New World between the Canadas and the United States. During the battle of the gauges in the railway world Sir George Airy strenuously advocated the narrow gauge..."

"The writings of the Astronomer Royal are numerous. He has contributed largely to the Cambridge Transactions and the Philosophical Transactions. His pen has notably illustrated the memoirs of the Astronomical Society. He has written abundantly for the , and still more abundantly, under his reversed initials, A. B. G., in the columns of the Athenœum. His principle works, however, are...: "Gravitation," published in 1837, was written originally for the "Penny Cyclopædia." "Mathematical Tracts" have reached a fourth edition, as have also his "Ipswich Lectures on Astronomy." In 1861 appeared his treatise on "Errors of Observation;" in 1869 his treatise on "Sound," and in 1870 his treatise on "Magnetism." Sir George Airys well-known work on "Trigonometry" was published in 1855. Another work of his, entitled "Figure of the Earth," has yet to be named, as well as the luminous paper on "Tides and Waves," contributed by him, first of all, to the "." Even while simply Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge his "Astronomical Observations," issuing... between 1829 and 1838, extended in nine quarto volumes, and were adopted at once as models for that class of publication."

"[T]his Fifth Edition is required to meet the demand of a somewhat wider class of students than those for whom the Lectures were originally intended. ...Mr. Stirling has been at liberty to prepare the modifications and additions ..."