60 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 393. 



ment and government, the ofScial correspond- 

 ence concerning the purchase and repair of 

 equipment, if, in short, the temple of Serapis 

 were presented to us as Mr. Wolf has pre- 

 sented the Paris Observatory during the nrst 

 century of its existence, the mere remoteness 

 of Ptolemy's epoch and our comparative dearth 

 of information concerning it, would command 

 for his narrative of commonplace incidents 

 an interest that is in great part lacking from 

 the corresponding events of an epoch so much 

 nearer to our own time. 



It must be confessed that we find Mr. Wolf's 

 chronicle somewhat dry reading, and that 

 neither the dimensions and cost of walls and 

 windows nor the tale of petty squabbles as to 

 who should have the right to grow beans and 

 onions within and beneath them, is long able 

 to keep the reviewer's thoughts from wander- 

 ing to other topics. Yet is it well that some 

 one having access to the original sources of 

 information should gather and arrange the 

 data here preserved, relative to the growth of 

 a great scientific institution, and this work 

 Mr. Wolf appears to have done, with a praise- 

 worthy diligence whose dry-aa-dust character- 

 istics are from time to time relieved by an en- 

 tertaining digression or a touch of zeal for the 

 house of Cassini that might well become a de- 

 scendant of the three generations of astrono- 

 mers so intimately connected with the early 

 history of the Paris Observatory. 



An often-quoted paragraph in Flamsteed's 

 warrant as the first Astronomer Eoyal of Great 

 Britain, charges him with definite duties and 

 a definite program in the administration of 

 the Royal Observatory, and serves Mr. Wolf as 

 a text with whose singleness of purpose he 

 contrasts the lack of plan that characterized 

 the foundation of the French observatory. We 

 read in substance rather than in exact trans- 

 lation, "In creating this institution Colbert 

 sought to erect to astronomy and the other sci- 

 ences, but chiefly to the glory of his king, a 

 magnificent palace, whose splendor should be 

 worthy of the prince who built it and in which 

 the members of the newly created Academy, 

 without being subject to any prescribed duties, 

 should by their labors vie with each other for 

 the royal approbation, each following his own 



preferences according to the inspiration of the 

 moment. Within it laboratories were provided 

 for the chemists and physicists, a museum of 

 anatomy for the naturalists, etc., but the ob- 

 servatory was too far from the center of 

 Parisian life, and chemists, physicists and phy- 

 sicians alike soon forgot the way thither, if 

 indeed they ever learned it. For a time the 

 astronomers responded to the munificence with 

 which the king and his minister had provided 

 instrrunents of observation for their use, but, 

 alas, the instruments belonged to the Academy 

 and no one in particular had charge over or re- 

 sponsibility for them, and like their fellow 

 academicians of a different cloth, the astrono- 

 mers in time learned that the road to the ob- 

 servatory was long and that their convenience 

 was best served by deporting the instruments 

 and doing their work at home. After a few 

 years there were left to the observatory only 

 the four or five savants who lodged within its 

 walls, and these worked independently of each 

 other without supervision or direction. While 

 Paris in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 

 turies had no lack of brilliant astronomers, down 

 to the concluding years of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury there was in truth no Paris Observatory 

 in the sense that we now attach to this word, 

 and that in England has been attached to it 

 from the beginning, viz., a body of observers 

 working under a common direction for a well- 

 defined purpose. They ignore these conditions- 

 of the observatory who reproach its astronomers 

 for not having produced and published those well- 

 planned and long-continued labors that con- 

 stitute the foundations of astronomy, but which 

 are possible only in an observatory properly 

 organized." The American astronomer is per- 

 force reminded by these lines of analogies with 

 another scientific institution much nearer 

 home. 



In the early years of the observatory the 

 chief authority exercised within it seems to 

 have been vested in the concierge, whose office 

 was one of considerable dignity and eagerly 

 sought by members of the Academy. The first 

 real director was not appointed until 1771,, 

 when the third Cassini (de Thury) came into 

 olfice. Serving through the dark days of the 

 Revolution, he protested manfully against out- 



