1"ETTERS O'P A CITIZEN. 43 



performed. In a communication bearing your name, which ap- 

 peared in the " Washington Globe" of the 18th January last, you 

 hold the following language : 



" From the moment this expedition was authorized by Congress, 

 I considered that, as its dangers, fatigues, and hardships were to 

 be borne by the officers of the navy, they ought to participate 

 largely in its advantages and honours ; and that, in all cases in 

 which, from their literature and science, they were competent to 

 the task of promoting the great objects of the expedition, they 

 were to be preferred to citizens equally competent, but not sub- 

 ject to like responsibilities." 



Although I deemed the language here used was put forth 

 rather to foment jealousies between the officers and the natural- 

 ists, or other citizens to be employed, than as an exposition of a 

 rule by which, from a high sense of duty, you felt constrained to 

 act ; and while I cannot but repudiate the invidious distinctions, 

 untrue in fact, which you have drawn between the labours that 

 the members of the expedition, naval and civil, will respectively 

 be required to perform, as well as the supposition that the hon- 

 ours which the one class might acquire could, with liberal minds, 

 disparage the just pretensions of the other ; yet, in this case, I 

 think the navy would have some ground for complaint should the 

 overshadowing appointment of an astronomer be made, unless 

 practical results can be expected from his services. On this 

 point I have doubts, and I state them for your consideration with- 

 out any unbecoming confidence in my own opinion. 



I should, however, be gratified to see you point out what astro- 

 nomical calculations can possibly be performed which will not 

 fall within the province of the nautical department, and which 

 practical navigators are not most likely to make with accuracy. 

 Have you reflected upon the means indispensable to the success 

 of purely astronomical inquiry ? Are you prepared to ask of Con- 

 gress the funds for erecting an elevated stationary observatory for 

 the permanent adjustment of costly and complicated instruments, 

 without which an astronomer can do little or nothing ? Have you 

 taken into consideration the time which must be uninterruptedly 

 devoted at one place to comparative observations of the celestial 

 bodies as they move in the hemisphere ? Or do you believe these 

 observations can be prosecuted on shipboard underanged by the 



