PHOTOGRAPHY AND ASTROPHYSICS 443 



plates and printing the results, but for publishing an expensive set 

 of charts which will be of very little use to any one; on the other hand, 

 some of their colleagues have found the utmost difficulty in getting 

 funds for even taking the plates; others have got so far but cannot 

 proceed to measure them; and very few indeed have yet funds for 

 printing. If there had been a true spirit of cooperation for the general 

 good in this enterprise, surely some of the funds being squandered on 

 the comparatively useless charts would have been devoted to the 

 proper completion of the only part of the scheme which has a chance 

 of fulfillment. I do not mean to imply that this would have been an 

 easy matter to arrange, but it is noteworthy that no attempt in this 

 direction has been made, and that as a consequence a promising 

 scheme is doomed to failure in one important particular. For though 

 the survey of the whole sky to the eleventh magnitude may some 

 day be completed, it will be sadly lacking in homogeneity. Some 

 sections are finished before others are begun, so that in the vital 

 matter of epoch we shall have a scrappy and straggling series instead 

 of a compact whole. 



Cooperation in scientific work, the necessity of which is being borne 

 in upon us from all sides, is nevertheless beset with difficulties, and 

 no doubt we shall only reach success through a series of failures, but 

 we shall reach it the more rapidly if we note carefully the weaknesses 

 of successive attempts. In the particular scheme of the Astrographic 

 Chart, I think an error which should be avoided in future was made 

 by those who have access to the chief sources of astronomical en- 

 dowment. They have made the enterprise doubly difficult for their 

 colleagues: first, by setting a standard of work which was unattain- 

 able with limited resources; and, secondly, by depleting the reserves 

 which might have gone to assist the weaker observatories. 



It is easier to draw attention to these modern tendencies than 

 to suggest a remedy for them. It may, perhaps, be questioned 

 whether a remedy is either possible or necessary; it may be urged 

 that it is both inevitable and desirable that astronomical observa- 

 tion should gravitate more and more to those well-equipped observ- 

 atories where it can be best conducted, and that new resources will 

 obtain the greatest results when added to a working capital which 

 is already large. From the purely economical point of view of getting 

 results most rapidly, these conclusions may be true. But if we look 

 at the human side of the question, I hope we shall dissent from them; 

 if we think first of astronomers rather than of the accumulation of 

 astronomical facts, I hope we shall admit that something must be 

 done to check the excessive specialization and the inequalities of 

 opportunity towards which there is a danger of our drifting. We 

 cannot afford the division of astronomers into two types: one isolated 

 in a well-equipped observatory in a fine but rather inaccessible 



