MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 365 



RECENT ADVANCES IN ASTRONOMY. 



By W. F. HoTT, Kansas Wesleyaa University, Salina. 

 Read before the Academy, at Manhattan, November 27, 1903. 



\ STRONOMY is the most ancient among the sciences. Five 

 ^^^ thousand years ago the builders of the pyramids had considera- 

 ble accurate knowledge of the starry heavens. Antedating this, possi- 

 bly, the oriental shepherds and the priestly magi of Babylon knew 

 the first five or six planets and the principal stars and constellations. 

 The patriarch Job mentions Arcturus, Orion, Draco, the Pleiades, and 

 the zodiac. Astronomy was not only the first science mastered, but 

 at the opening of the nineteenth century it was thought to be com- 

 pleted as far as human genius could perfect it, excepting as better in- 

 struments should reveal certain details as yet beyond reach. Any 

 intimate knowledge of the constitution, conditions and movements of 

 the stars, so far away that motions from ten to two hundred times as 

 swift as a cannon-ball do not show any perceptible displacement in 

 a century, was thought to be chimerical. Discoveries might be pos- 

 sible in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc., but the human in- 

 tellect had reached its ultima thide in astronomy. During the last half 

 of the past century, however, science, which seemed to be hardening 

 into a permanent, finished form, suddenly became plastic again by the 

 injection of marvelous discoveries, and the revolutionary hypotheses 

 founded upon them. In no one of the sciences have greater discov- 

 eries or more revolutionary changes been made. Instead of being the 

 most barren field for scientific research, astronomy quickly became 

 one of the most fertile. One cause for satisfaction is the fact that 

 America now leads the world in astronomical equipment and investi- 

 gation. 



The exciting cause for this activity and success in the astronomical 

 field has been the invention and improvement of instruments of 

 research. With all its attachments and improvements, the modern 

 telescope, perhaps, in its mechanical perfection alone, represents the 

 most splendid product of human thought and skill. It is a far cry 

 from the spectacle-lens instrument with which Galileo startled the 

 world to the forty-inch Yerkes refractor, and the sixty-two-inch re- 

 flector recently made for the American University, at Washington, D, 

 C. There are now about fifty great telescopes mounted in more or 

 less well-equipped observatories in the United States. There were 

 none until about the middle of the last century, when Professor 

 Mitchell secured and mounted a twelve-inch instrument at Cincinnati, 



