506 STEPHEN ALEXANDER. 



mind and pen, but prevented by continually increasing feebleness from 

 appearing much in public, or completing many things for printing. 



Some months before his death he met with a singular accident, by 

 which a shoulder was dislocated and the arm broken. Although the 

 fracture healed and the bone knit together again, almost against 

 expectation, yet he never regained his strength, but gradually de- 

 clined and died at last, so far as appeared, from mere exhaustion. 



He was married twice : first, to Miss Meads of Albany, who died 

 in 1846, leaving three daughters, two of whom are living. His 

 second marriage was in 18.")0, to Miss Forman of Princeton, who 

 survives him, with two daughters. 



His eminence was recognized in various ways during his life. In 

 1839, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Soci- 

 ety, and a fellow of our own Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1850. 

 He received the degree of LL. D. from Columbia College in 1852 ; 

 in 1859 he was President of the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, and in 18G2 was selected as one of the original 

 fifty members of the National Academy of Sciences. 



During his connection with the College of New Jersey he accom- 

 plished a considerable amount of valuable astronomical observation ; 

 and that, although he had no observatory nor any instrumental equip- 

 ment such as would now be considered indispensable in a respectable 

 high school. In 1835, in connection with Professor Espy, he made 

 an accurate determination of the difference of longitude between 

 Princeton and Philadelphia by the observation of meteors. The 

 method had been proposed (first by Ilalley) more than a hundred 

 years before ; but, so far as I can learn, this was its first successful 

 application, and the only one in this country. Not long after, similar 

 observations were made in Germany, Ireland, and Italy. r>ut the 

 telegraph soon superseded shooting-stars for all such purposes. A 

 few years later he participated with Professor Henry in thermopile 

 observations upon the radiation of sun-spots. 



But his main interest lay in the observation of solar eclipses, 

 and in this he was enthusiastic and indefatigable. He began his 

 astronomical career before he came to Princeton, by his observations 

 of the annular eclipse of 1831, at Berlin, INIaryland. These observa- 

 tions, together with certain star-occultations and calculations of the 

 longitude of Albany, were communicated to the Albany Institute. 

 In 1834, he went to Ebenezer, Georgia, to observe the total eclipse 

 which occurred on November 30th of that year. Through the liberal- 

 ity of friends of the College, he had just come into possession of a fine 



