3 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



branch of Astronomy Spherical Astronomy that the college observa- 

 tory was founded, and, if it does this in the right way, it is of great 

 value. To do this properly, requires but a small outlay. A small 

 equatorial of, say, four inches aperture, with circles divided to one 

 minute, will serve to exhibit every thing of interest to the general ob- 

 server, and will give a student much more opportunity for work than 

 he can possibly find time to improve. A Pistor & Martin's portable 

 meridian circle, two good clocks or chronometers, and, if one wishes 

 luxury, a chronograph, will fit up a small observatory in the most com- 

 plete way, and give both student and professor excellent means for 

 observation. All this could easily be bought for the price of one of 

 the unwieldy equatorials which lie idle in so many college-towers. 



"We must remember, too, that the professor of astronomy in most 

 colleges is a busy individual. I have before me the condensed cata- 

 logues of 157 American colleges, with an aggregate number of pupils 

 so great as 34,515, and, on running over the lists of college-officers, I 

 find such entries as the following : " , Professor of Mechan- 

 ics, Astronomy, and Engineering : " or " Professor of Mathematics, 

 Astronomy, Physics, and Geology:" or of "Astronomy and Physi- 

 ology ; " or, again, of " Latin, Astronomy, and History of American 

 Literature," and many other similar mixtures. 



All this indicates that very little time is given by the average stu- 

 dent to any proper study of the subject, and the expensive and ill-con- 

 sidered observatories in the country certainly show that a great deal 

 of money and time is wasted in their construction. The writer of this 

 article is familiar with several of such ill-proportioned sets of appara- 

 tus. In one case, the observatory contains a fair equatorial of six inches 

 aperture, mounted on a brick arch let into the walls of its tower a few 

 feet below the floor of the dome, which arch receives every tremor of 

 the adjacent building, which is full of students ; also a fine portable 

 transit by Wurdemann, no clock, and a mean solar chronometer. In 

 another a fine clock is thrown away on a zenith telescope, which is used 

 only as a transit, and so on. 



The moral would seem to be to have few instruments, to have them 

 of the best possible workmanship for their size, and to have no one so 

 large and expensive as to prevent the purchase of others which are 

 necessary. 



But it is proposed further to give a few reasons why, as a means 

 of education, the astronomical observatory might well, in ordinary 

 cases, be superseded by the physical observatory, or at least why- in 

 most cases it would be better to divert some of the funds, which would 

 otherwise be spent on little-used apparatus, to establishing a physical 

 observatory, on a modest basis. 



And first let us remember that, to properly educate, we must not 

 only give knowledge, but also the power to acquire knowledge ; that, 

 although facts are of great importance, the mental grasp which will 



