78 SIMON NEWCOMB 



The mere preparation of the ephemeris includes but a 

 small part of the work of mathematical calculation and investi- 

 gation required in astronomy. One of the great wants of the 

 science to-day is the re-reduction of the observations made 

 during the first half of the last century, and even during 

 the last half of the preceding one. The labor which could 

 profitably be devoted to this work would be more than that 

 required in any one astronomical obserV^atory. It is unfortu- 

 nate for this work that a great building is not required for its 

 prosecution because its needfulness is thus very generally 

 overlooked by that portion of the public interested in the 

 progress of science. An orgajiization especially devoted to 

 it is one of the scientific needs of oiir time. 



In such an epoch making age as the present it is dangerous 

 to cite any one step as making a new epoch. Yet it may be 

 that when the historian of the future reviews the science of 

 our day he will find the most remarkable feature of the astron- 

 omy of the last twenty years of our century to be the discovery 

 that this steadfast earth of which the poets have told us is 

 not after all quite steadfast; that the north and south poles 

 move about a very little, describing curves so complicated 

 that they have not yet been fully marked out. The periodic 

 variations of latitude thus brought about were first suspected 

 about 1880, and announced with some modest assurance by 

 Kiistner, of Berlin, a few years later. The progress of the 

 views of astronomical opinion from incredulity to confidence 

 was extremely slow until, about 1890, Chandler, of the United 

 States, by an exhaustive discussion of innumerable results of 

 observations, showed that the latitude of every point on the 

 earth was subject to a double oscillation, one having a period 

 of a year, the other of four hundred and twenty seven days. 



Notwithstanding the remarkable parallel between the 

 growth of American astronomy and that of Chicago, one can 

 not but fear that if a foreign observer had been asked only 

 fourteen years ago at what point in the United States a 

 great school of theoretical and practical astronomy, aided by 

 an establishment for the exploration of the heavens, was 

 likely to be established by the munificence of private citizens, 

 he would have been wiser than most foreigners had he guessed 



