SKETCH OF PROFESSOR EDWARD S. HOLDER. 117 



or of the Washburn Observatory ; and obtaining, at the request of 

 Governor Washburn, a leave of absence from the Naval Observatory, 

 February 2, 1881, he immediately proceeded to Madison to take charge 

 of the observatory, which was then in an entirely unfinished state : his 

 official connection with the navy was not severed till June 1, 1882. 

 Professor Holden's five years of administration of the Washburn Ob- 

 servatory have established it in the foremost rank of American observ- 

 atories. Four volumes of publications have been issued, the last one 

 containing the most important piece of work of the Repsold meridian 

 circle, the determination of the positions of the 303 fundamental stars 

 for the southern zones of the " Astronomische Gesellschaft "; to form, 

 however, an adequate idea of the varied labors of the director and his 

 assistants, reference must be made to the volumes themselves. In 1883 

 Professor Holden's work at Madison was interrupted for several months, 

 to conduct the Government expedition to Caroline Island in the South 

 Pacific mid-ocean, for the purpose of observing the total eclipse of the 

 sun on May 6th. Professor Holden's chosen task was again, as in 1878, 

 the search for intra-Mercurial planets, and with the exceptionally long 

 duration of totality — nearly six minutes — this search was made under 

 most favorable circumstances, and again resulted negatively. The ac- 

 count of this expedition, contained in an interesting memoir of the Na- 

 tional Academy of Sciences, will be found to be " much more than a 

 technical report on the dry scientific details of the work of eclipse- 

 observers " : it includes an entertaining narrative of the ocean-voyage 

 of twenty-nine days from Callao, and a complete history and descrip- 

 tion of the lonely little island, with photographic views of the charac- 

 teristic vegetation and reef -beeches. 



Professor Holden's resignation of the chair of Astronomy at Madi- 

 son took effect on the 1st of January, 1886, upon his acceptance of his 

 present position, the presidency of the University of California, and di- 

 rectorship of the Lick Observatory. Since 1874 he has been one of the 

 chief consulting astronomers to the Lick trustees, who, under the pro- 

 visions of the will, have charge of building and equipping the observa- 

 tory. In 1881 he visited Mount Hamilton and successfully observed the 

 transit of Mercury ; in 18S3 he visited it again, and in 1884 he went 

 out again to superintend the erection of the fine Repsold meridian circle. 

 The Lick Observatory, as it approaches completion, has received so 

 much attention in scientific and popular journals, that a description of 

 it seems hardly necessary here. The giant thirty-six-inch objective — 

 through which " the observer might expect to see the moon much the 

 same as he would without the telescope if it were only a hundred miles 

 away," and might make out objects on the moon's surface "although 

 they were no larger than some of the larger edifices on the eailh " — 

 is now in a fair way to be finished by the Clarks during the autumn of 

 the present year ; the steel dome will probably be finished about the 



