PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 75 



This was a time of hard work, and we must not withhold our 

 praise from the noble little company of pioneers who were, in those 

 years, building the foundations upon which the scientific institu- 

 tions of to-day are resting. 



The difficulties and drawbacks of scientific research at this time 

 have been well described by one who knew them :* 



" The professedly scientific institutions of our country issued, 

 from time to time, though at considerable intervals, volumes of 

 transactions and proceedings unquestionably not without their 

 influence in keeping alive the scarcely kindled flame, but whose 

 contents, as might be expected, were, for the most part, rather in 

 conformity with the then existing standard of excellence than in 

 advance of it. Natural history in the United States was the mere 

 sorting of genera and species. The highest requisite for distinc- 

 tion in any physical science was the knowledge of what European 

 students had attained. Astronomy was, in general, confined to 

 observations, and those not of the most refined character, and its 

 merely descriptive departments were estimated far more highly 

 than the study of its laws. Astronomical computation had hardly 

 risen above the ciphering out of eclipses and occultations. Indeed, 

 I risk nothing in saying that astronomy had lost ground in Amer- 

 ica since those colonial times, when men like Rittenhouse kept 

 up a constant scientific communication with students of astronomy 

 beyond the seas. And I believe I may farther say, that a single 

 instance of a man's devoting himself to science as the only earthly 

 guide, aim, and object of his life, while unassured of a professor's 

 chair or some analogous appointment upon which he might de- 

 pend for subsistence, was utterly* unknown. 



" Such was the state of science in general. In astronomy the 

 expensive appliances requisite for all observations of the higher 

 class were wanting, and there was not in the United States, with 

 the exception of the Hudson Observatory, to which Professor 

 Loomis devoted such hours as he could spare from his duties in 

 the college, a single establishment provided with the means of mak- 

 ing an absolute determination of the place of any celestial body, or 

 even relative determinations at all commensurate in accuracy w r ith 

 the demands of the times. The only instrument that could be 

 thought of for the purpose was the Yale College telescope, which, 

 although provided with a micrometer, was destitute of the means 

 of identifying comparison-stars. A better idea of American as- 

 tronomy a dozen years ago can hardly be obtained than by quot- 



* GOULD, B. A. Address in commemoration of Sears Cook WalkeV 

 <Proc. Amer. Assoc. Ad. Set., viii, 25 



