142 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 11)21. 



tory, at Williams College, Massachusetts, was an admirable index 

 to the intellectual outlook of the Western Reserve. 3 The laying of 

 the cornerstone of the Cincinnati Observatory in 1843, a wonderfully 

 ambitious institution for its day, was an event considered by Ex- 

 President John Quincy Adams to be worthy of a hard trip, in the 

 seventy-seventh year of his life, by rail from Massachusetts to Buf- 

 falo, by lake steamer to Cleveland, by four days of miserable canal 

 boat to Columbus, and thence on to Cincinnati, to deliver the formal 

 address — then called an oration. Adams's task was, to quote his 

 words, " To turn this enthusiasm for astronomy at Cincinnati into a 

 permanent and persevering national pursuit, which may extend the 

 bounds of human knowledge, and make the country instrumental in 

 elevating the character and improving the condition of man upon 

 earth." 



Our former slave states have to-day only one active observatory, at 

 the University of Virginia, presented by McCormick, of Chicago. 

 Barnard and other astronomical enthusiasts, born and grown to man- 

 hood in the south, have found their opportunities in the great north- 

 ern observatories, with Olivier, of the University of Virginia, as the 

 sole exception. What is true of astronomy in the south is true, in 

 general, of the other sciences. This unfortunate situation is the 

 natural product of the false, unscientific system of labor which, pre- 

 vailing through many generations, taught that it is undignified for 

 the white man to eat bread by the sweat of his own brow. Financial 

 recovery, following 1865, has accordingly been slow. The future 

 will correct this, for the men of the south are our blood brothers. 

 We should be, and are, sympathetic. 



Shall we try to estimate what astronomy, the oldest of the sciences, 

 sometimes called an ideal and unpractical science, has done for man- 

 kind? 



Here are some of the applications of astronomy to daily life : 



1. Observations of the stars with the transit instrument, such as 

 exists in this observatory, are supplying the nations with accurate 

 time. Two astronomers, with modern instrumental equipment, sit- 

 uated on the same north and south line, may observe the stars so 

 accurately, in comparison with the beats of their common clock, that 

 they will agree within two or three hundredths of a second as to how 

 much that clock is fast or slow. 



2. The accurate maps of the continents and islands depend upon 

 the astronomical determinations of the latitudes and longitudes of 

 their salient features. 



3. The sailing of ships over long courses, say from the Golden 

 Gate to Sydney, Australia, or from New York to the Cape of Good 



* The northeastern part of Ohio constitutes the " Western Reserve." 



