REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON OBSERVATORIES 9 



now extends in aid of astronomical research at existing institutions, 

 so long as the results obtained shall show that such aid is efi&ciently 

 expended. By the encouragement of several active centers of astro- 

 nomical activity the amount of valuable astronomical product is 

 stimulated out of all proportion to the means expended, and the 

 future development of a number of able astronomers is made more 

 certain than would be the case in a policy of greater centralization. 



Proposed Observing Station in the Southern Hemisphere. 



The project for a Southern Observatory was advocated in the 

 general report of the Advisory Committee on Astronomy for 1902. 

 Among other things, the committee says : 



' ' The third point which has specially impressed itself upon our 

 attention is the great deficiency of observatories in the southern 

 hemisphere. * * * Since more than one quarter of the entire 

 celestial sphere is efficiently reached only from the southern hemi- 

 sphere, it is obvious that there is now very great disparity of astro- 

 nomical resources to the disadvantage of the southern hemisphere. 

 '.- ^ ^ We regard this question to be exceeded in importance 

 only by the urgent need of provision for current work to which we 

 have already alluded." (Year Book for 1902, pp. 89-90.) 



The matter was further discussed in Appendix A and elsewhere 

 in the reports of the committee. 



We advocate the establishment of another active astronomical 

 station in the southern hemisphere because there is needed in certain 

 special lines a much greater output of astronomical observations, 

 which can be obtained only by means of an observatory in some part 

 of the southern hemisphere. This need veritably exists, as we shall 

 attempt to show. It has grown out of the present progress of as- 

 tronomy. The satisfaction of this need seems possible only through 

 the aid of the Carnegie Institution. 



What, then, is this need ? We attempt to answer this question 

 more fully in the section of this report devoted to special considera- 

 tion of the proposed Southern Observatory ; but we may be per- 

 mitted to touch upon it briefly in another way here. 



For three centuries astronomy has been developing by a rapidly 

 increasing ratio of progression in attack upon the most accessible 

 sources of knowledge. Until after the middle of the nineteenth 

 century it was almost wholly absorbed in 



(«) The study of the shape and dimensions of the earth and 

 other terrestrial problems ; 



