4 2 o The Smithsonian Institution 



neither of these bills became law, it is well to remember how 

 strenuously the application of the Smithson fund to this pur- 

 pose was urged at the time when the Institution was taking 

 the shape it now bears. 



At the time that President Adams submitted these bills 

 astronomy had departed little from the beaten track in which 

 it had moved for centuries, and in which its main object had 

 been to fix with precision the places of the heavenly bodies, 

 without determining their nature. As the writer has else- 

 where said : 



" The prime object of astronomy until lately has been to 

 say where any heavenly body is, rather than what it is, but 

 within the present generation a new branch of astronomy has 

 arisen, which studies the heavenly bodies for what they are 

 in themselves and in relation to ourselves. Its study of the 

 sun, for instance, beginning with its external features, led to 

 the inquiry as to what it was made of, and then to the finding 

 of the unexpected relations which it bore to the earth and to 

 our daily lives on it, the conclusion being that in a physical 

 sense it made us and recreates us, as it were, daily, and that 

 the knowledge of the intimate ties which unite man with it 

 brings results of a practical and important kind which a gen- 

 eration ago were hardly guessed at." 



As the aims of this new astronomy are different from the 

 old, so are its methods, in which it bears but an imperfect 

 resemblance to those of the older or classic astronomy ; and 

 this diversity of method influences even the external struc- 

 ture. In place of an imposing edifice, crowned by a dome 

 which shelters a great telescope, we are more likely to find 

 a modest installation in which the telescope, though present, 

 is not necessarily the important feature; in which there are 

 no great meridian instruments, but instead a room shel- 

 tering spectroscopes, photographic objectives, and the like ; 



