SKETCH OF INCREASE ALLEN LAP HAM, LL.D. 83 5 



in the measurement of time. The time is not far distant when in- 

 struments will be devised for ascertaining in the simplest manner and 

 with the utmost accuracy the time of day from the sun and stars. 

 In general, astronomy will find occasion each year, in ever-increasing 

 measure, to communicate for universal use its advanced determina- 

 tions and measurements. 



The study of astronomy is especially fascinating and helpful to 

 the understanding, in that the mind, translated so far away from the 

 sphere of earth, catches glimpses of the grand and universal outlines 

 of celestial phenomena, and is enabled to emancipate itself from the 

 astrological superstition which we have endeavored to illustrate in the 

 foregoing pages. 



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SKETCH OF INCREASE ALLEN LAPHAM, LL. D. 



THE advancement of American science has beeu greatly promoted 

 by the co-operation of a host of earnest workers, who, asking 

 nothing in the way of money profit or fame, but moved by the pure 

 love of science for its own sake, have been satisfied to labor in special 

 or local fields, and contribute of what they could produce as free gifts 

 to the sum of knowledge. Such a man of science was Dr. I. A. Lap- 

 ham, who, according to a most excellent authority, " would have held 

 a more prominent position if he had been more ambitious " ; who was, 

 however, well enough known to the people of his own State and in 

 scientific circles everywhere ; and the fitting memorials of whose life- 

 work are conspicuously visible in the organization of the Weather Ser- 

 vice of the United States and the prominent position Wisconsin has 

 taken as a region where scientific thought is active. 



Increase Allen Lapham was born at Palmyra, New York, March 

 7, 1811, and died on Lake Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, September 14, 

 1875. His father was a contractor on public works, which, in the days 

 of the son's youth, were chiefly canals ; he built the arches of the first 

 aqueduct at Rochestei*, and the wood- work of the combined and double 

 locks at Lockport, on the Erie Canal, and was engaged in other im- 

 portant works of a similar character. Young Lapham's earlier tastes 

 were guided largely by the business pursuits of his father. He earned 

 his first money by cutting stone for canal-locks and making plans of 

 the locks for travelers ; then he became interested 'in the minerals 

 that were found in the rock-cuts at Lockport, and was thus directed to 

 the observation of nature. He next appears, in 1826, as an aid to his 

 father, an assistant engineer, in laying out a road down the Canada 

 bank of the Niagara River below the falls ; afterward on the Welland 

 Canal ; then on the Miami Canal, under Byron Kilbonrn ; and, during 

 the two years from 1827, on the canal around the falls of the Ohio, 



