228 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



since been made. They may be said to form the basis of our present 

 knowledge of the region which they included in their scope. 



Herschel's work may be described as principally in the nature of an 

 exploration. He had no instruments for accurately determining the 

 positions of stars. In the latter field the first important contributions 

 after Lacaille were made by Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New 

 South Wales, and Eumker, his assistant, at Paramata. Johnson, of 

 England, about 1830, introduced modern accuracy into the construction 

 of a rather limited catalogue of stars which he observed at St. Helena. 

 About the same time the British Government established the observa- 

 tory at the Cape of Good Hope, which has maintained its activity to 

 the present time, though, at first, its means were extremely limited. 

 About the middle of the century the Government of New South Wales 

 established, first at Williamstown and then at Melbourne, an observa- 

 tory which has worked in the same field with marked success. 



An American enterprise in the same direction was that of Captain 

 James M. Gilliss, who, in 1849, organized an astronomical expedition 

 to Chili. The principal motive of this enterprise was the determining 

 of the solar parallax by observations upon Venus and Mars near the 

 time of their nearest approach to the earth. As these observations 

 would take but a small part of his time, Gilliss determined to take with 

 him instruments for determining the positions of the stars. He es- 

 tablished his observatory at a point near Santiago, where he continued 

 his observations for nearly three years. He was a practical observer, 

 but an untoward circumstance detracted from the value of his work. 

 His observatory was built upon a rocky eminence, a foundation which 

 seemed to afford the best possible guarantee of the stability of his 

 instruments. He made no attempt to reduce his observations till after 

 his return home. Then it was found that the foundation, through the 

 expansion and contraction due to the heat of the sun, was subject to a 

 diurnal change which made it extremely difficult to derive good results 

 from his careful work. It was not until 189G, more than thirty years 

 after his death, that the catalogue of the stars observed by him was at 

 last completed and published. 



We do not derogate in any way from the merit of these efforts in 

 saying that they could not lead to results comparable with those of the 

 score of richly equipped northern observatories which the leading 

 nations and universities of Europe had endowed and supported for 

 more than a hundred years. Only within the last thirty years has it 

 been possible to bring our knowledge of the southern heavens up to 

 a satisfactory stage. Now, however, the progress of southern astron- 

 omy, if we may use the term, is such that in several points our knowl- 

 edge of the southern heavens surpasses that of the northern ones. If 

 we measure institutions by the importance of the work they are doing,. 



