viii OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 



breeds who paddled the canoe, however, they arrived at the place 

 selected on the evening before the eclipse was to take place. Clouds, 

 however, covered the sky so that nothing could be done, a not uncom- 

 mon experience in such cases. 



In i86i Mr. Newcomb was informed of a vacancy in the corps 

 of professors of mathematics attached to the Naval Observatory at 

 Washington, with the suggestion that he should apply for the place. 

 Although the desirability of some position of greater prominence 

 and with a better outlook for the future was not new, still the sur- 

 roundings and attractions at Cambridge were so congenial that the 

 thought of severing them was not an agreeable one. After some 

 hesitation, however, Mr. Newcomb made formal application for the 

 professorship and, as he confesses, was greatly surprised to receive, 

 a month later, his commission, duly signed by Abraham Lincoln. 



The duties at the Washington Observatory were of a character 

 entirely new to Mr. Newcomb. The use of instruments in practical 

 work was entirely outside his experience. In fact, with the excep- 

 tion of two or three visits to the Cambridge Observatory, he had 

 never been inside such an establishment. Nor had he any particular 

 liking for this kind of work, which, it must be confessed, involves 

 a great amount of drudgery, and interferes sadly with continuous 

 theoretical investigation. 



The Washington Observatory was at that time practically the 

 only place in the country where continuous observation was carried 

 on. The principal instruments consisted of a mural circle in charge 

 of Professor Yarnall, with the necessary clocks and subsidiary appa- 

 ratus. In point of accuracy and precision, these were not what 

 we should call first class instruments. But the methods followed 

 were even worse than the instruments. Each observer pursued his 

 own plan, observing what he pleased and when he pleased, with no 

 uniformity of program, employing no uniform system of reduction, 

 so that anything like homogeneity of results was out of the question. 

 To add to the difficulty, the observatory was situated in a malarial 

 district near the Potomac, far from the resident quarter of the city, 

 so that the observers were compelled to walk from one to three 

 miles through muddy streets in going and returning from work. 



