jANtTABT 15, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



83 



ing letter was sent, and the replies are given 

 below in tte order in which they were 

 received. 



My Dear Sir: The greatest return in astronom- 

 ieal output, for a given expenditure, in my opin- 

 ion, could be obtained by moderate grants to lead- 

 ing astronomers. I am accordingly sending copies 

 of this letter to twelve of the American astrono- 

 mers who would, it seems to me, make the best use 

 of a grant of one thousand dollars a year for five 

 years. I want to publish these needs and then see 

 if the money can be obtained. Are you inclined 

 to make me a statement of about one hundred 

 words showing how you would apply such a grant f 

 I give below my own statement as an example. 

 Yours very truly, 



Edwaed C. Pickering 



Statement 

 The New Draper Catalogue will fill eight quarto 

 volumes of the Harvard Annals, and will give the 

 class of spectrum and magnitude of two hundred 

 thousand stars, or more. Miss Cannon has nearly 

 completed the observations, but publication could 

 be greatly expedited by the employment of an ad- 

 ditional assistant at an annual salary of five hun- 

 dred dollars. Another extensive research on the 

 photographic brightness of the stars by Miss 

 Leavitt, could be equally advanced in the same 

 way. In carefully organized routine work a great 

 increase in efficiency may be obtained by the use 

 of such assistants. 



Professor C. L. Doolittle desires $500 to 

 $1,000 for publication of results already ob- 

 tained. 



Professor E. W. Brown approves of the 

 determination of the position of the moon by 

 photography as described below by Professor 

 Eussell, and suggests a determ.ination of the 

 lunar parallax by a similar method. 



Professor P. Schlesinger states that a very 

 efficient method for cataloguing stars by 

 means of a photographic doublet has been 

 developed at the Allegheny Observatory during 

 the past few months. This is being applied 

 to a zone four degrees wide at the celestial 

 equator. We have been urged by astronomers 

 here and abroad to extend this work to other 

 parts of the sky. A grant of $1,000 per annum 

 continued for about twelve years would enable 

 us to cover nearly the whole northern sky in 



this way. Among other things, this work 

 would help materially the progress of the great 

 Astrographic Catalogue, and would increase 

 its value. If the same work were done by the 

 earlier and ordinary methods it would cost 

 not less than ten times as much and would be 

 far less accurate. 



Professor S. A. Mitchell states that the 

 Leander McCormick Observatory has under- 

 taken as its principal work the photographic 

 determination of stellar parallax, an impor- 

 tant research to which the 26-inch telescope 

 is excellently adapted. The income of the ob- 

 servatory for the payment of all salaries (ex- 

 cept the director's), for maintenance, and for 

 improvements is less than $1,500 per year. 

 The award by Columbia University of the 

 Adams Eesearch Fellowship for the present 

 year has made possible a much needed increase 

 in staff. One thousand dollars per year would 

 permit the continuation of parallax work, and 

 would also allow expansion along visual lines 

 and in photometric work. 



Professor F. Slocum states that the Van 

 Vleck Observatory will be finished during the 

 summer of 1915. The principal instrument 

 will be a new 18J-inch Clark refractor. The 

 mounting and clock work will be made by 

 Warner and Swasey. The observatory is to 

 be used by classes in astronomy of Wesleyan 

 University, but it is the intention of the 

 director to devote as much time as possible to 

 research. The chief feature of the proposed 

 program will be systematic observations for 

 the determination of stellar parallaxes. The 

 midnight hours, when parallax factors are 

 small, will probably be used for micrometric 

 or photometric observations. An assistant at 

 $1,000 per year to share in making the ob- 

 servations and to carry out the routine work 

 of computation would greatly increase the 

 efficiency of the observatory. 



Professor E. B. Frost states that up to the 

 end of 1913, 5,100 stellar spectrograms had 

 been obtained with the Bruce spectrograph of 

 the Yerkes Observatory for the purpose of 

 determining the velocity in the line of sight 

 of northern stars, chiefly of spectral types 

 B and A, brighter than magnitude 5.5. Of 



