HIS ASTRONOMICAL WORK 49 



It was concluded, therefore, that Lalande had observed 

 and recorded Neptune as a fixed star on the nights of 

 May 8 and 10, 1795. This discovery enabled astrono- 

 mers to compute the new planet's orbit from observations 

 extending over a period of fifty years. 



The work on this catalogue was carried forward in- 

 dustriously for several years, but the results were not 

 ready to be published in the volume of observations for 

 the year 1846 because of the continual drafts on the 

 personnel of the Observatory for sea duty, which made 

 it impossible for the computers to keep pace with the 

 observers. Eventually, Maury was compelled to aban- 

 don the hope of ever finishing a complete catalogue of 

 the stars, as at first planned. The observations con- 

 tinued to be made, however, and by January of 1855 the 

 number of stars which had been so observed reached the 

 grand total of 100,000; but these results w^ere not pub- 

 lished until 1873, long after Maury's superintendency 

 had come to a close. Maury would never have under- 

 taken such an ambitious work, if he had realized the 

 Herculean labor involved in the cataloguing of all the 

 stars down to the 10th magnitude in all the heavens 

 from 45° south to the North Pole, a colossal undertaking 

 that was entirely beyond the capacity of any one observ- 

 atory to accomplish in a generation. 



The appearance of the second volume of astronomical 

 observations was delayed because of the inroads made on 

 Maury's staff by the demands of the Mexican War. 

 Then when the work was on the point of being published 

 it was destroyed by a fire which burned the printing 

 office. So the volume did not appear until the year 

 1851; and as the years went by publications fell further 

 and further behind the observations. There is no 



