500 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



tory buildings have been erected and equipped, where before that time 

 was a desolate and waste expanse of broken ground, almost untrodden, 

 except by prairie-dogs, foxes, and iguanas. A thorough survey of the 

 entire southern heavens has been made, comprising a determination of 

 the positions and brightness of all stars to a limit below the seventh 

 magnitude inclusive, and the whole work then repeated for the two- 

 fold purpose of detecting errors and of recognizing any important 

 changes in the stars themselves. This revision will in all probability 

 have been completed before the close of 1872. Standards of magni- 

 tude have for the first time been established for each tenth of a unit, 

 as far as the eighth magnitude, throughout the circumference of the 

 heavens, and selected in that portion of the Northern Hemisphere 

 which has an equal meridian altitude for this observatory and for the 

 average of northern ones. A thorough revision of the constellations 

 of this hemisphere has been accomplished, and definite boundaries 

 established, which, if accepted by astronomers, .as I have reason to be- 

 lieve will be the case, will put an end to the confusion that has hitherto 

 existed. The zone observations for a Southern Catalogue have been 

 organized and are now going on systematically through the whole re- 

 gion between the Tropic of Capricorn and the eightieth degree of South 

 Declination, the positions of nearly seven thousand stars having been 

 already determined. Three campaigns for longitude determinations by 

 telegraph have been carried out with the view of improving the map 

 of the continent ; and when the pending determination of the longitude 

 between this observatory and the National Observatory of Chile shall 

 have been completed, the positions of many points in South America 

 will be known with a precision <puite comparable to that with which the 

 principal points in the United States have been established. 



Furthermore, a system of meteorological observations is now organ- 

 izing, as a national establishment, intended to embrace all portions of 

 this Republic from Bolivia to the Straits of Magellan, and from the 

 Andes to the Pacific. Funds have been voted for furnishing the need- 

 ful instruments to all who are able and willing to carry on the observa- 

 tions, and the whole organization, although under my charge for the 

 present, is made independent of the observatory. Thus there is reason 

 to hope that the strange and hitherto almost unknown meteorological 

 peculiarities of this singular region will within a few years become 

 well understood. 



I yet indulge the hope that it may be within my power, in some 



