858 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 234. 



tory in the world. The funds for its sup- 

 port come from the pockets of our tax- 

 payers, and the latter, speaking through 

 our astronomers as their mouthpiece, should 

 be satisfied with nothing less than that the 

 work done by the institution shall corre- 

 spond to the liberality with which they are 

 supporting it. The fact that our country 

 has a larger proportion of the ablest as- 

 tronomers of the world than any other, not 

 excepting even Germany, leaves us without 

 any excuse if our national observatory fails 

 to be completely up to the present time. 



For more than fifty years we have been 

 trying an experiment in astronomical ad- 

 ministration which no other nation ever 

 thought of trying and which we ourselves 

 have never tried in any other field, that of 

 managing a great national observatory like 

 a naval station. One of the most impor- 

 tant questions is whether this experiment, 

 taking the whole fifty years together, can 

 be called a success. This question can be 

 answered only by a critical examination of 

 the work of the institution, as found in its 

 volumes of published observations and offi- 

 cial reports. In this connection it will be 

 wise to review the laudable efforts made 

 from time to time to improve the adminis- 

 tration and determine the causes of their 

 success or failure. 



When the subject is considered from this 

 point of view it is a serious question whether 

 anj' other than an adverse conclusion can 

 be reached. It is true that excellent work 

 has now and then been done at the obser- 

 vatory and that this, taken in connection 

 with the favorable impression made by the 

 splendor of its new buildings, prepossesses 



the public, which never looks below the 

 surface in its favor. But, as was very 

 clearly pointed out by the ISTational Acad- 

 emy of Sciences in a report in 1885, this 

 good work has been mostly the voluntary 

 work of individuals who happened to be at- 

 tached to the institution and acted on their 

 own initiative. The part of the adminis- 

 tration was only to get the men together 

 and procure them facilities for work. 



It should also be remembered that even 

 this work is not by any means a permanent 

 feature of the institution. If we take away 

 from the latter such work as that of Seers 

 Cook Walker in investigating the motions 

 of Neptune, and of Professor Asaph Hall in 

 discovering the satellites of Mars and in in- 

 vestigating the motions of other satellites, 

 what have we left? If anything but a 

 heterogeneous collection of observations 

 and researches, sometimes intermitted en- 

 tirely and sometimes carried on with vigor, 

 sometimes devoted to one object, sometimes 

 to another, sometimes able and sometimes 

 useless, generally of the most perfunctory 

 kind, neai-ly always with more or less im- 

 perfect instruments and witli little evidence 

 of any concerted plan, we hope the board 

 will find it out. 



An excellent text will be found in the re- 

 cent catalogue of stars by Professor East- 

 man, which, we are told in the preface, has 

 occupied two-thirds of the observatory force 

 for a period of more than thirty years. 

 What should the committee say when it 

 compares the unflagging zeal and persist- 

 ence of the author with the imperfections of 

 the instrument he had to use ? 



In the same class may come the more re- 



