A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



can at once draw upon their special knowledge for aid 

 on any obscure point in their lines that may crop up. 

 If we were out in the country this would not be so. 

 You see, then, that it is a choice between weather and 

 brains. I prefer the brains." 



Professor Lockyer went on to state, however, that 

 he is by no means altogether dependent upon the ob- 

 servations made at South Kensington. For certain 

 purposes the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is in 

 requisition, and there are three observatories at differ- 

 ent places in India at which photographs of the sun- 

 spots and solar spectra are taken regularly. From 

 these combined sources photographs of the sun are 

 forthcoming practically every day of the year; to be 

 accurate, on three hundred and sixty days out of the 

 three hundred and sixty-five. It was far otherwise 

 when Professor Lockyer first began his studies of the 

 sun, as observations were then made and recorded on 

 only about one-third of the days in each year. 



Exteriorly the observatory at South Kensington is 

 not at all such a place as one might expect to find. It 

 is, in Professor Lockyer's own words, " little more than 

 a collection of sheds," but within these alleged sheds 

 may be found an excellent equipment of telescopes, 

 both refracting and reflecting, and of all other things 

 requisite to the peculiar study which forms the subject 

 of special research here. 



I have had occasion again and again to call atten- 

 tion to this relatively meagre equipment of the Euro- 

 pean institutions, but in no case, perhaps, is the con- 

 trast more striking between the exterior appearance 

 of a famous scientific institution and the work that is 



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