164 BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD— COMSTOCK. IM ' M0,M [v^xyf£ 



people, set down in the new world but perpetuating in it the life and ideas of a bygone time. 

 Capable of supporting life in a primitive but fairly comfortable fashion, the place was almost 

 wholly devoid of accessories for a scientific establishment. Mechanical faculties of every kind, 

 fight, power, machinery, and skilled labor were almost unknown, and local assistance was of 

 small avail save for the aid given by one or two Cordobans who had been educated in Europe. 

 Foreseeing these conditions, Gould had made provision against them by ordering from home 

 and from Europe not only the instrumental equipment required for his work, but much of 

 accessory supplies, extending even to tfie framework of his proposed observatory. Most impor- 

 tant of all, he had organized and sent on by ship direct from Maine to Argentina a party of four 

 young men to be his assistants and collaborators in the proposed work. While they were not 

 technically trained astronomers, Gould notes with much appreciation that a college education 

 had prepared each of them for the rapid development of efficiency in fiis new evironment. 



Gould's early estimate that three years would suffice for the accomplishment of his observ- 

 ing program was soon made obsolete. War in Europe, pestilence and quarantine in America, 

 produced extraordinary delay in receipt of his shipments. The five American astronomers 

 found themselves beneath the southern stars but with no instruments for observing them, 

 and with small prospect that any such equipment could arrive and be installed for many months 

 to come. With characteristic vigor Gould rose to the emergency. Once before he had faced 

 something of the same kind when the long delay in mounting the instruments of the Dudley 

 Observatory had caused him to study the northern heavens with the naked eye and to set down 

 in catalogue form the approximate position and degree of brightness of each star that should 

 later be observed when the appropriate instrument was available. He now resorted to a similar 

 idea for the virgin southern sky but with a difference of purpose and from a new view point 

 that mark his own development in the intervening years. At Albany he had insisted that while 

 the natural history of the sky may possess some interest, it is not the proper and serious work 

 for an astromomer; " the study of the motions of the heavenly bodies is nevertheless the sole 

 problem of astronomy." (Reply to the statement, etc., p. 95.) In accordance with this prin- 

 ciple the naked eye work at Albany was a mere skirmish preparatory to a real campaign of obser- 

 vations that should be undertaken later. Per contra the Cordoba work was .conceived as a 

 serious problem in itself. It was to be a photometric work wherein certain empirical standards 

 of stellar brightness set up by others among the northern stars should be extended into the 

 southern sky by means of a carefully arranged program of observations with the naked eye or 

 opera glass and in terms of these standards, revised and corrected if need be, there should be 

 determined with all possible precision the brightness of every southern star visible to the naked 

 eye. His own myopic vision might suffice for the work at Albany but he deemed it inadequate 

 for that at Cordoba. The thousands of tedious observations required for this work were there- 

 fore executed by his associates while Gould planned, superintended, and inspired the work 

 from beginning to end. 



The final results of this work were published, under the special title Uranometria Argentina, 

 in Volume I of that splendid series of Resultados del Observatorio Nacional Argentino en Cordo- 

 ba, the first 15 volumes of which present the chief results of his life and work in South America. 

 No attempt can here be made to abstract their contents but we may note that the Uranometria, 

 completed in 1874 but not published until 1879, commanded the immediate and enthusiastic 

 appreciation of astronomers throughout the world as a notable contribution to their science. 

 At one stroke, Gould had raised our knowledge of the aspect of the southern sky to a parity 

 with that which in the northern heavens had been attained by the labor of many astronomers 

 through many years. He had rearranged the boundaries of its constellations as well as classified 

 their content and with his new data had formulated and studied a wide range of problems 

 extending from technical photometry to the structure of the universe. 



The National Academy of Sciences took the unusual step of expressing through formal 

 resolution its appreciation of this work accomplished by its absent member, and the Royal 

 Astronomical Society (London) in 1883 bestowed upon Gould its gold medal in recognition of 



