WILLIAM CRANCH BOND. 



225 



factorily stood the test of a voyage to and from the East Indies. 

 In 1810 the Bonds removed their business to Congress Street, 

 and the family took up its abode in Dorchester. 



Mr. Bond regarded his watching of the eclipse when he was 

 seventeen years of age as the event that determined his pur- 

 suit of astronomy. Certain it is that he never afterward aban- 

 doned it. Five years later he came under the notice of older 

 astronomers, and in this way : Prof. John Farrar, of Harvard 

 College, having caught sight of a comet on September 4, 1811, 

 watched its subsequent progress and published a paper on it in 

 the memoirs of the American Academy. Dr. Nathaniel Bow- 

 ditch, of Salem, to whom he communicated this discovery, did 

 the same, and the comet was watched also by others. Before 

 presenting his paper to the academy, Prof. Farrar learned that 

 young Bond had seen the comet in the preceding April. He 

 mentioned this fact in the account of his own observations and 

 added the following notes, with which, he says, Mr. Bond had 

 " obligingly favoured " him : 



"I remarked on the 2ist of April a faint, whitish light near 

 the constellation Canis Major projecting a tail about one de- 

 gree in length, and set down its place as follows : right ascen- 

 sion, 106; declination, 7 or 8 south. Its motion and the 

 situation of its tail convinced me that it was a comet. I noticed 

 it several times in May, and supposed that its motion was 

 toward the western part of the constellation Leo."* 



These observations on the comet brought the young chro- 

 nometer-maker the acquaintance of scientific men and facili- 

 ties for his favourite pursuit. Up to this time his observations 

 had been made with the rudest appliances. The elder brother 

 already quoted says of these early days : " I suppose it would 

 cause the astronomer royal to laugh could he see the first 

 transit instrument used by us at Dorchester a strip of brass 

 nailed to the east end of the house, with a hole in it to see a 

 fixed star and note its transit; this in 1813. When we moved 

 into the Hawes house, he procured a good granite block ; we 

 dug a deep hole and placed it at the west end of the house, 



* Much of the material here employed is derived from a historical sketch 

 of the Harvard College Observatory, prepared by Mr. Daniel W. Baker, which 

 first appeared as a series of newspaper articles, and was afterward reprinted in 

 pamphlet form as one of the official publications of the observatory. 



