42 8 The Smithsonian histitution 



it ; how its heat is distributed, and how it, in fact, affects not 

 only the seasons and the farmer's crops, but the whole sys- 

 tem of living things on the earth, for it has lately been proven 

 that in a physical sense it, and almost it alone, literally first 

 creates and then modifies them in almost every possible way. 



" We have, however, arrived at a knowledge that it does 

 so, without yet knowing in most cases how it does so, and 

 we are sure of the great importance of this last acquisition, 

 while still largely in ignorance how to obtain it. We are, 

 for example, sure that the latter knowledge would form 

 among other things a scientific basis for meteorology and 

 enable us to predict the years of good or bad harvests, so far 

 as these depend on natural causes, independent of man, and 

 yet we are still very far from being able to make such a pre- 

 diction, and we cannot do so till we have learned more by 

 such studies as those in question. 



" Knowledge of the nature of the certain, but still imper- 

 fectly understood, dependence of terrestrial events on solar 

 causes is, then, of the greatest practical consequence, and 

 it is with these large aims of ultimate utility in view, as well 

 as for the abstract interest of scientific investigation, that the 

 government is asked to recognize such researches as of na- 

 tional importance ; for it is to such a knowledge of causes 

 with such practical consequences that this class of investiga- 

 tion aims and tends. 



"Astrophysics by no means confines its investigation to 

 the sun, though that is the most important subject of its 

 study and one which has been undertaken by nearly every 

 leading government of the civilized world but the United 

 States. France has a great astrophysical observatory in 

 Meudon, and Germany one on an equal scale in Potsdam, 

 while England, Italy, and other countries have also, at the 

 national expense, maintained for many years institutions for 

 the prosecution of astrophysical science. 



" It has been observed that this recent science itself was 

 almost coeval with the discovery of the spectroscope, and that 

 instrument has everywhere been largely employed in most 

 of its work. Of the heat which the sun sends, however, and 



