4 o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



probably not have the privilege of reading tbe proof. ... As for 

 the buoys, I touched them not ! " The Grand Duke Constantine 

 and Napoleon III offered him positions in Russia and France, re- 

 spectively, which he declined. He became a member of a Council 

 of Three to assist the Governor of Virginia, and in June, 1861, was 

 appointed Chief of the Sea-coast, Harbor, and River Defenses of 

 the South. He assisted in fitting out the Merrimac ; invented a 

 torpedo to be used for harbor and land defense ; and was engaged, 

 in the summer of 18G2, in mining the James River below all the 

 defenses, when he was ordered to go to Europe to purchase torpedo 

 material. During the first and second years of the war he pub- 

 lished a series of papers urging the building of a navy, and of 

 protecting the bays and rivers with small floating batteries. He 

 stayed in England, on Confederate business, till the surrender of 

 Lee, when he dispatched a letter to the United States officer com- 

 manding the squadron of the Gulf, declaring that he regarded 

 himself in the relation to the United States substantially of a 

 prisoner of war. He then offered his services to Maximilian in 

 Mexico, and accepted the position of Director of the Imperial 

 Observatory. A plan he had conceived for the formation of a 

 colony of Virginians in Mexico was accepted by Maximilian, and 

 he was appointed Imperial Commissioner for Colonization. The 

 scheme was, however, abandoned as soon as Maury left Mexico to 

 return to England. His course in this matter was not approved 

 by his friends, either in Europe or in America. It is claimed that 

 he performed one great service for Mexico during his short career 

 there, in introducing the cultivation of the cinchona-tree. 



Returning to England in March, 1866, Maury was given a testi- 

 monial, by naval and scientific men, in recognition of his scientific 

 worth and service. He was employed in Paris, by Napoleon III, 

 to instruct a board of French officers in his system of defensive 

 sea-mining. Returning to London, he opened a school of instruc- 

 tion in electric torpedoes, which was attended — at the expense of 

 their governments — by officers of the Swedish, Dutch, and other 

 nations. At the instance of Mr. C. B. Richardson, a New York 

 publisher, he undertook a series of geographical text-books, saying 

 as he went to his task, " I could not wind up my career more use- 

 fully (and usefulness is both honor and glory) than by helping to 

 shape the character and mold the destinies of the rising genera- 

 tion." He also wrote a popular book on astronomy, which has 

 never been published. 



In 1868 Maury received the degree of LL. D. from the Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge, along with Alfred Tennyson, Max Muller, 

 and Mr. Wright, the Egyptologist, and declined an invitation 

 from Napoleon III to the directorship of the Imperial Observa- 

 tory of France. Taking advantage of the general amnesty act to 



