SKETCH OF AIARIA MITCHELL. 551 



caught her first view of a new comet from the stateroom window- 

 She at once hurried back to Ponghkeepsie to make her observa- 

 tions. An apple tree was in the way, and she had it cut down. 

 Then a mist arose, and the observation had to be postponed. On 

 account of the incident of the tree, the girls called her George 

 Washington. 



During her later years at Vassar, Miss Mitchell endeavored to 

 raise a fund to endow the chair of astronomy. The fund was 

 completed after her death, amounting to fifty thousand dollars, 

 and is known as the Maria Mitchell Endowment Fund. It was 

 her custom every year, in the week before commencement, to gi\e 

 her students a " dome party " a breakfast in the observatory, 

 and these were most enjoyable occasions to all. 



Miss Mitchell was chairman of the Standing Committee on 

 Woman's Work in Science of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Women, and was for several years president of 

 the association. "Some of her students did their first work for 

 women's organizations in gathering statistics and filling out 

 blanks which she distributed among them." She believed in the 

 woman suffrage movement, but took no prominent part in it. 

 She was the first woman elected to membership in the American 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston. She was chosen in 1859 

 a member of the American Philosophical Society ; was for many 

 years a member of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science ; was connected with the New England Women's 

 Club and with Sorosis ; and received degrees from Rutgers Fe. 

 male College, Hanover College, and Columbia College. She con- 

 tributed a paper on Mary Somerville to the Atlantic Monthly in 

 18G0; articles, mostly on observations of Jupiter and Saturn, to 

 the American Journal of Science ; a few popular science papers 

 in Hours at Home ; and an article on The Herschels was printed 

 in The Century just after her death. She also read a few lectures 

 to small societies and to one or two girls' schools, " but she never 

 allowed such outside work to interfere with her duties at "Vassar 

 College." She resigned her position in Vassar College, on ac- 

 count of growing infirmity, in January, 1888, after having, as 

 she boasted, earned a salary, without any intermission, for more 

 than fifty years. The trustees made her professor emeritus, 

 and offered her a home in the observatory, but she preferred 

 to spend the few remaining months of her life with her family 

 in Lynn. 



It is partly a result of Miss Mitchell's work that woman 

 astronomers are now no longer regarded as something remark- 

 able. 



