26 



described as running longitudinally from east to west through the building, may 

 have the middle of its foundation exactly on the representative of the equator. 

 Observations may be made from the observatory, and the angles of bearing 

 taken to any given part of the earth, as thus laid down. It may perhaps be 

 permitted to remark, that the line of the prime meridian being arbitrary, some 

 counting from the Greenwich observatory, some from the observatory at Wash- 

 ington, others from Paris, &c., there would be an advantage in using maps and 

 globes, if all counted the 180 east and west from the same starting-point or 

 line. A great circle of the earth passing through Behring's straits passes also 

 close to Mont Blanc, the highest portion of Europe, and through or close to the 

 island of St. Thomas, on the coast of Africa, about the spot where the magnetic 

 and terrestrial equators intersect and coincide. This line also nearly represents 

 the greatest north and south elongation of Europe and Africa. Another great 

 circle, exactly 90 degrees from this prime meridian, passes through Asia and 

 America at or near their greatest north and south elongation, as well as near 

 the greatest elevation of land in both continents. These straits, therefore, seem 

 to have strong claims upon us for the prime meridiancy. Other and even more 

 important reasons that might be assigned would occupy too much space for this 

 communication. 



III. THE BUILDINGS. 



These might, perhaps, most conveniently consist of one large central building 

 and one smaller, to connect, if desired, by a covered way with the main building 

 on its southeast corner. 



Externally the central building might be similar to the Indiana State Uni- 

 versity, which presents a good architectural effect a large body, entered by 

 two porticoes and broad stairways, in a contracted appendage to the main body, 

 which again expands into two wings, each stairway leading into the centre as 

 well as into the rooms of one wing. That building cost about $30,000. It is 

 of brick, with massive stone, foundation, stone corners to all the outside walls, 

 also stone sills and lintels to doors and windows, seventy by fifty-five feet in 

 the main body, and about forty feet high, twelve-feet passages for stairways, 

 wings thirty-six by twenty-five feet, and thirty-four feet high. 



For the purposes designed to be attained in the agricultural college and 

 normal school, the main body should be somewhat larger than that of the build- 

 ing just described; say as much as eighty feet long by sixty broad, exclusive 

 of walls, and about forty-six feet high, exclusive of observatory; while the 

 wings might be the same as in the university, thirty-six by twenty-five in the 

 clear, but thirty-eight feet high. 



Not far from the southwest corner might be wood and coal shelters and other 

 out-buildings, some of which might be in pavilion form. Longitudinally from 

 east to west through the main body, but not the wings, should run a two-foot 

 wall, (viz: two bricks and a half thick, which, with mortar, would occupy 

 nearly twenty-four inches ; leaving, by the omission of the middle half brick, 

 about five inches for the hot-air flues and the cold-air ventilation flues.) The 

 former should communicate with a cellar of sufficient size, under the northeast 

 quarter of the centre building, where also means may be devised for keeping 

 the plants, alluded to hereafter, at a sufficient temperature. In this cellar should 

 be large furnaces, heated by coal or wood, to distribute, through this central 

 wall, heat to the fire-rooms in the main body, and perhaps by cross walls, even 

 to the wings ; otherwise they may be- heated by stoves in the usual manner. 

 In the large central rooms there should be registers to admit or shut off at 

 option the hot air; and others, communicating with the cold-air flues, to permit 

 the escape of hot or vitiated air. A similar arrangement should ventilate every 

 room occupied in all the buildings. If steam be deemed a better mode of heat- 



