406 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing the preceding spring he had declined " the almost unlimited 

 offers made to him by the administration at Washington to in- 

 duce him to take charge of the observatory there." It is known 

 also that frequent expenditures of his own money were made 

 during this period for current expenses and for things convenient 

 in conducting the observatory sums small severally, no doubt, 

 but considerable in the total. In 1846 a sum equal to the proposed 

 salaries for the next two years was subscribed by citizens of Bos- 

 ton, and in 1849 the official board was able to report that " through 

 a bequest of one hundred thousand dollars made by Edward 

 Bromfield Phillips they should thereafter be relieved from anxiety 

 as to the payment of salaries and current expenses." 



The fifteen-inch equatorial was set up in June, 1847, and has 

 done splendid service for now nearly half a century. At last the 

 skill of Prof. Bond was furnished with a fitting implement. In 

 reply to an inquiry from Edward Everett, who had become presi- 

 dent of the college the year before, Prof. Bond wrote specifying 

 several interesting things that could be seen with it, and ended by 

 saying : " But I must recollect that you require of me only a brief 

 account of our telescope. The objects revealed to us by this ex- 

 cellent instrument are so numerous and interesting that it is diffi- 

 cult to know where to stop/' In a subsequent letter he wrote to 

 the president, " You will rejoice with me that the great nebula in 

 Orion has yielded to the powers of our incomparable telescope." 

 Besides this and other nebulse the planet Saturn was an early sub- 

 ject of investigation. On September 19, 1848, Prof. Bond dis- 

 covered the eighth satellite of this planet, which long remained 

 the only addition to the solar system made on the continent of 

 America. 



When Bond was determining the position of the Harvard Ob- 

 servatory, Commodore Owen, of the British navy, was making an 

 official survey in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The latter, 

 desiring to use the observatory as his zero point, co-operated with 

 Bond in making a transfer of twelve chronometers to and from 

 Greenwich, England. Afterward other chronometer expeditions 

 were conducted by Bond in co-operation with the United States 

 Coast Survey, the final one being in 1855. In the summing up of 

 results, seven hundred and twenty-three independent chronometer 

 records were used. The magnitude of this undertaking, as a whole, 

 surpassed anything ever attempted in any other country. 



As early as 1848 Prof. Bond mentions, in his report as director 

 of the observatory, some experiments with the daguerreotype 

 and talbotype processes for obtaining pictures of the sun, which, 

 though encouraging, could hardly be called successful. But in 

 his report for 1850 he is able to say : " With the assistance of Mr. 

 J. A. Whipple, daguerreotypist, we have obtained several impres- 



