204 HISTOEY OF ASTEONOMY. 



insufficient, aid was solicited and obtained from the As- 

 sembly. Temporary observatories were erected, tolerably 

 well adapted to the purposes for which they were design- 

 ed. A reflecting telescope with a Dollond micrometer 

 was purchased in London by Dr. Franklin, with the 

 money voted by the Assembly; another of the same 

 character was presented by Thomas Penn, of London ; 

 and other instruments were supplied in sufficient num- 

 ber. The observations at the three stations were all 

 successful, and an account of them is given in the first 

 volume of the Transactions of the American Philosophical 

 Society. 



For more than half a century after the transit of Yenus, 

 very little, if any, progress seemed to have been made to- 

 ward the erection of a permanent observatory, or to- 

 ward the procuring of large instruments such as modern 

 astronomy requires. The first direct proposition for the 

 establishment of an observatory was contained in Mr. 

 Hassler's project for the survey of the coast, submitted to 

 the Government through Mr. Gallatin, in the year 1807. 

 The proposition met with no favor. The original law, 

 authorizing the survey, passed without any provision on 

 the subject, and the law of 1832 expressly prohibits such 

 an establishment. The late John Quincy Adams, in his 

 first annual message in 1825, strongly urged this subject 

 upon the attention of Congress. After recommending 

 the establishment of a National University, he said : 



" Connected with the establishment of a university, or 

 separate from it, might be undertaken the erection of an 



