164 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



" Durin» seventeen years I have been Mr. Bond's colleague in Har- 

 vard ColIe"-e, and this interval comprises the whole period in which he 

 had any favorable opportunity of astronomical investigation. Bi>t his 

 love for the science had been shown long before he came to Harvard, 

 and even a quarter of a century earlier he made a careful survey of 

 the Greenwich Observatory, at the request of Professor Farrar, with 

 direct reference to the superintendence of the erection of an observa- 

 tory at Cambridge. This was in the year 1815, at a time when only 

 a small fraction of the present members of this Academy had reached 

 the age of manhood, and while Bowditch was still in Salem, with his 

 great intellect just beginning to dawn upon the learned societies of 

 Europe. When Mr. Bond returned from England, he set up a small 

 observatory of his own, where he undertook the observation of occulta- 

 tions and eclipses. It was here that he developed one of the finest ele- 

 ments of genuine enthusiasm and true genius, that of accomj)lishing 

 much with small means. In this liberal age, when there is such a 

 generous flow of material aid to the laboratories of science, there may 

 be danger that the ostentatious display of the appliances for discovery 

 will be substituted for the performance. On the contrary, a healthy 

 state of pubhc opinion should demand that the intellectual product be 

 commensurate with the greatness of opportunity, and that the magni- 

 tude of donation should be proportionate to the reasonable anticipation 

 of the corresponding increase of knowledge among mankind. 



" "While Mr. Bond was devoting himself to astronomy with simple 

 and unassuming zeal, he attracted the kind and approving regards of 

 men whose approbation and friendship were worthy of being secured, 

 and who never deserted him. When, in the year 1842, he was drawn 

 to Cambridge by the strong hand of President Quincy ; when the cause 

 of the Observatory was undertaken by the unflinching and irresistible 

 vigor of my friend, Mr. J. Ingersoll Bowditch ; when even the heavens 

 came to our assistance, and that wonderful comet of 1843, appearing at 

 mid-day in close proximity to the sun, and seeming to send off in a few 

 hours its immense train of two hundred millions of miles in length, ex- 

 cited most opportunely a universal interest in celestial phenomena, — 

 it was then apparent that the aftection for Mr. Bond was the chief 

 strength of the occasion, and to that were we mainly indebted for the 

 successful attempt to obtain the unrivalled equatorial of the University, 

 and to lay the foundations of the Observatory. In the history of Amer- 



