458 JAMES CRAIG WATSON, 



necessary, improving the material to be included iu his work, in such 

 a manner as to produce a most valuable result. Besides this important 

 contribution to the means of instruction in astronomy, he frequently 

 sent communications to scientific periodicals. 



Professor Watson was also known as an observer of special phe- 

 nomena. He observed the total solar eclipses of 1869, 1870, and 

 1878, at the respective stations of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, Carlentini, 

 Sicily, and Separation, "Wyoming Territory ; and also the transit of 

 Venus in 1874, at Peking, China (where he incidentally discovered 

 an asteroid, to which he assigned the Chinese name, " Juewa," in com- 

 memoration of the place of its discovery). During the eclipse of 

 1878, Professor Watson found two objects which he considered to be 

 intra-mercurial planets. In 1879 he accepted the position of Director 

 of the Washburn Observatory at Madison, AYisconsin, where, with the 

 aid of more powerful instruments than had previously been at his dis- 

 posal, he hoped to confirm the existence of the planets found the year 

 before, and to undertake a search for other objects of interest. But 

 towards the end of 1880, while he was engaged in superintending the 

 ingenious arrangements which he had devised for these purposes, a 

 neglected cold suddenly assumed a fatal form, and terminated his earthly 

 labors on the morning of Nov. 23. 



As a man of business. Professor Watson was endowed with the 

 acuteness and energy which distinguished him as an astronomer. He 

 was long the Actuary of the Michigan Mutual Life Insurance Com- 

 pany, and filled that office with great success. Beginning life without 

 property, he had acquired before his death a handsome fortune, of 

 which he intended to avail himself in forwarding the astronomical 

 researches of his later years. The sudden close of his life, at the 

 moment when his opportunities for scientific inquiries had just been 

 greatly enlarged, is a serious misfortune to the cause of astronomy, 

 as well as to his numerous friends ; for it cannot be doubted that his 

 extraordinary activity and energy, combined with his capacity as 

 a mathematician and his ingenuity as an inventor, would have 

 continued to raise him in the estimation of the scientific world, and 

 to produce interesting additions to our knowledge of the physical 

 universe. 



