rewarded, by learning with what skill and patience, observers have 

 sought out, and recorded, the places and characters, of these numerous 

 and interesting telescopic objects." ss In search of more information about 

 these stars, Clark sent a reprint to William Mitchell on Nantucket. 89 The 

 Boston newspaper of 2 April carried another letter in which Alvan Clark 

 explains that the double star had already been cataloged by Struve, 

 "which adds anew to my dearly bought impression, that wary manage- 

 ment is necessary to win reprisals from the 'upper deep.' " 90 Later that 

 month Clark informed the newspaper editor of a close approach of 

 Jupiter and its satellites and the double star Virginis, which makes 

 a "peculiarly beautiful group for the telescope." 91 



Later in 1 851, in search of a more sympathetic and helpful audience 

 than he could apparently find at home, Clark wrote to William R. Dawes 

 in England. Dawes, who immediately appreciated Clark's work, pub- 

 lished in the Monthly Notices measures of his binary stars, descriptions of 

 his instruments, and the comment that Clark's "eye, as well as his tele- 

 scope must possess extraordinary power of definition." 



There is evidence that Clark's early observations were not unappre- 

 ciated in his own country. Benjamin A. Gould and Joseph Winlock, both 

 of whom had received as good an astronomical education and employ- 

 ment as was then possible, erected the temporary Cloverden Observatory 

 in Cambridge in the early 1850's. In a prominently published descrip- 

 tion of their work, in 1854, they singled out the "experience of Mr. 

 Alvan Clark" which supplied them with the positions of difficult double 

 stars, many of which Clark had actually discovered. 93 



88 Alvan Clark, "Search for New Double Stars," Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 

 31 March 1851, p. 2. 



89 Alvan Clark to William Mitchell, 1 April 1851 (letter in library of the Maria 

 Mitchell Association). 



90 Alvan Clark letter to the editor, Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 2 April 1851, 

 p. 2. 



91 Alvan Clark letter to the editor, Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 25 April 1851, 

 p. 2. 



92 William R. Dawes, "New Double Stars Discovered by Mr. Alvan Clark . . .," 

 op. cit. See also below, description of Dawes' apparatus in catalog of Clark instru- 

 ments. 



93 Benjamin A. Gould and Joseph Winlock, "Cloverden Observatory and the 

 Shelby Equatorial," Proc, American Association for the Advancement of Science, vol. 8 

 (1854), p. 87. 



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