8 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



duty is found in the publication of books; for although these are 

 destined to resolve themselves into the elements of which they are 

 composed they will last long enough to enable our successors to 

 extract from them all of the ideas worthy of further exposition 

 and transmission. In illustration of this capital function of the 

 Institution it seems fitting to call attention here to a few of the 

 books issued by the Institution during the past 3'ear. 



It was the counsel of one of the most learned men of the 

 nineteenth century that those who wish their ideas to survive 

 indefinitely should seek to express them in terms not subject 

 to the vicissitudes of our planet. Although this counsel must 

 evidently remain for a long time an unrealizable ideal in most 

 domains of thought, an approximation to it has been attained in 

 som^e of the older sciences. Thus, for example, the names of 

 Euclid and Archimedes are likely to be transmitted undimmed 

 into the far distant future for the compelling reason that the}^ 

 are linked to principles which must hold regardless of time 

 and place. Similarly, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus will be 

 well known ages hence, since he has connected his name indis- 

 solubly with the secular phenomena of the solar system by his 

 discovery of the precession of the equinoxes and by his produc- 

 tion of the first catalogue of stellar positions. This catalogue, 

 known to the Greeks as the ''Great Construction'' (MeydXi? 

 XvvTa^Ls), was edited by Ptolemy, a worthy disciple of Hip- 

 parchus, and has come down to us finally (from A. D. 138) 

 through several Greek, Latin, and Arabic editions as ''Ptolemy's 

 Almagest." And now, for the last time probably, the various 

 editions of this remarkable w^ork have been collated with a 

 degree of thoroughness not hitherto attempted and a new 

 edition of the catalogue has been issued during the year by the 

 Institution. This edition is a result of the joint researches of 

 the late Dr. C. H. F. Peters, astronomer of Hamilton College, 

 and Mr. Edward B. Knobel, treasurer and past president of 

 the Royal Astronomical Society of London. In addition to the 

 profound historical importance of this early work, a great and 

 permanent merit of this latest edition Ues in the data it affords for 

 fixation of the relative precision of the ancient determinations of 

 stellar positions. Our admiration for the Alexandrian school of 

 astronomers need not be diminished, however, by the fact that 



