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But in addition to the stability of the instruments of an observa- 

 tory being affected by the slow movements detailed above, it may 

 be injured by quick vibratory motions, not producing permanent 

 change of place. This is, moreover, precisely the sort of inconve- 

 nience generally expected on a rocky foundation. Under such a 

 prejudice too was it, that at the first meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation in Edinburgh, several of the members, somewhat too hastily, 

 assumed, from their previous prejudices against rock, that the Cal- 

 ton Hill was by no means suitable for an observatory, and declared 

 that good observations could never be made there. But though 

 this unfounded opinion was refuted publicly almost as soon as pub- 

 lished, by Professor Wallace and others, good men of the day, and 

 has since been more formally put to the rout by Professor Hender- 

 son's long and excellent series of published observations ; yet the cry 

 having once been raised, a lingering echo seems still to exist in 

 some persons' minds, that the Calton Hill, because it is rock, is 

 always in such a state of tremor as to preclude the efficient perform- 

 ance of the instruments. And, worse still, only last summer, on a cer- 

 tain public occasion, one of the very gentlemen who in 1834 showed 

 such want of discretion and judgment, again made a similar exhi- 

 bition of himself. For putting out of sight the facts of all the 

 thousands of Edinburgh Observations, since printed and published, he 

 stated in a public place, that the British Association had declared that 

 the site of the Edinburgh Observatory was not a proper one for an as- 

 tronomical establishment, and that no o'ood observations could ever be 

 made there, leaving it of course to be inferred that no proof to the con- 

 trary had ever been since advanced, and that the dictum held still ; 

 and was that of the Association as a body ; which it never was. 



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