BENJAMIN APTIIORP GOULD. 357 



the United States Naval Observatory siuce its establishment, as he had 

 done also, several years previously, tor the expedition to Chili to deter- 

 mine the solar parallax. In 18G6 he planned and executed the work of 

 establishing, by the Atlantic cable, the relation in longitude between 

 European and American stations, involving, as a part, interesting re- 

 searches on the velocity of the galvanic current in submarine cables, 

 similar to those he had already made on land-lines. As actuary of the 

 United States Sanitary Commission, he conducted, and published in a 

 large volume, extensive and important researches upon Military and 

 Anthropological Statistics and the Distribution of Population. About 

 the same time he undertook the reduction of Rutherfurd's photographs 

 of the Pleiades. The results, partially published in 1866, were sub- 

 mitted completely, in an elaborate memoir, to the National Academy in 

 1870, together with a second memoir on the Prassepe. He was, indeed, 

 a pioneer in the utilization of photography for exact astronomical meas- 

 urement. About 1864 he built an observatory in Cambridge, equipped 

 with an eight-foot transit instrument, and, until 1867, carried on a de- 

 termination of the right ascensions of all the stars to the tenth magnitude 

 within one degree of the pole. The work was completely reduced, 

 but the discussion and publication were postponed by his removal to 

 Cordoba. 



In 1865 he became intensely impressed with a desire to explore the 

 southern celestial hemisphere. The opportunity to do so soon came. 

 This project assumed at first the form of a private astronomical expedi- 

 tion, for which his friends in Boston had promised the pecuniary means; 

 but, under the enthusiastic support of Mr. Sarmiento, at first as Argen- 

 tine Minister to this country, and later as President of that republic, it 

 rapidly broadened, and finally led to the establishment by Dr. Gould of 

 a permanent National Observatory at Cordoba. This marks an epoch in 

 modern astronomy, the equalization of our knowledge of the two celestial 

 hemispheres. The institution and its work form an impressive monu- 

 ment to his memory. 



It is impossible, in brief space, to describe or characterize the marvel- 

 lous work here undertaken and so faultlessly pushed to completion by 

 Dr. Gould, during the fifteen years of self-imposed exile from his native 

 land, with unfaltering devotion and energy, in the face of difficulty and 

 domestic bereavement. The work on the uranography of the southern 

 heavens was finished in 1874, and was published under the title of the 

 "Uranometria Argentina," which will remain a classic for all time. The 

 zone observations of the stars between 23° and 80° south declination, 



