98 IN STARRY REALMS. 



in celebration of the auspicious event. When I add that 

 this address was given by a lady it will, I think, show 

 that America, in respect to such performances, is much in 

 advance of the countries on this side of the Atlantic. 



The address was published in the Sidereal Messenger, 

 and has been copied into the Observatory for December, 

 1886. It is signed Mary E. Byrd, and is well worth 

 reading. It admirably expresses the wide divergence that 

 there often is between the presumed nature of the work 

 that is performed in an observatory in the popular imagi- 

 nation, and the routine of somewhat prosaic detail that is 

 the actual fact. 



I cannot resist quoting a passage from this address as 

 the best introduction to our present subject. 



"It is commonly fancied that there is a great deal of 

 poetry and romance within the walls of an observatory. 

 All have read the ancient legend of Tycho Brahe, how he 

 went to the observatory in robes of state, as if the presence 

 of the stars was the presence of princes. And people 

 fancy that here at midnight, in starlit domes, you almost 

 hear the music of the spheres. They picture to them- 

 selves the observer seated at his telescope hour after hour 

 looking down, down, into deep lunar craters, feasting on 

 delicate nebulae and swift-flying comets, or revelling in 

 gorgeous star clusters. Here, they think, night after night 

 before his rapt vision there passes all the panorama of the 

 heavens multiplied and glorified a thousandfold by his 

 powerful lenses. I have sometimes wished that it were 

 so ; but it is work that goes on in an observatory, work as 

 stern as that of the factory." 



The actual fact is, indeed, widely different from that 



