718 
Notwithstanding the remarkable parallel 
between the growth of American astronomy 
and that of your city, one cannot but fear 
that if a foreign observer had been asked 
only half a dozen years ago at what point in 
the United States a great school of theo- 
retical and practical astronomy, aided by 
an establishment for the exploration of the 
heavens, was likely to be established by the 
munificence of private citizens, he would 
have been wiser than most foreigners had 
he guessed Chicago. Had this place been 
suggested to him I fear he would have re- 
plied that were it possible to utilize celestial 
knowledge in acquiring earthly wealth 
here would be the most promising seat for 
such a school. But he would need to have 
been a little wiser than his generation to re- 
flect that wealth is at the base of all progress 
in knowledge and the liberal arts ; thatit is 
only when men are relieved from the neces- 
sity of devoting all their energies to the 
immediate wants of life that they can lead 
intellectual lives, and that we should there- 
fore look to the most enterprising commer- 
cial center as the likeliest seat for a great 
scientific institution. 
Now we have the school, and we have the 
observatory, which we hope will in the near 
future do work that will cast luster on the 
name of its founder as well as on the as- 
tronomers who may be associated with it. 
You will, Iam sure, pardon me if I make 
some suggestions on the subject of the future 
needs of the establishment. We want this 
newly founded institution to be a great suc- 
cess, to do work which’shall show that the 
intellectual productiveness of your com- 
munity will not be allowed to lag behind 
its material growth. The public is very apt 
to feel that when some munificent patron 
of science has mounted a great telescope 
under a suitable dome and supplied all the 
apparatus which the astronomer wants to 
use success is assured. But such is not the 
ease. The most important requisite, one 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8S. Voz. VI. No. 150. 
more difficult to command than telescopes 
or observatories, may still be wanting. A 
great telescope is of no use without a man 
at the end of it, and what the telescope may 
do depends more upon this appendage than 
upon the instrument itself. The place which 
' telescopes and observatories have taken in 
astronomical history are by no means pro- 
portional to their dimensions. Many a 
great instrument has been a mere toy in 
the hands of its owner. Many a small one 
has become famous. Twenty years ago 
there was here in your’own city a modest 
little instrument which, judged by its size, 
could not hold up its head with the great 
ones even of that day. It was the private 
property of a young man holding noscientifie 
position and scarcely known to the public. 
And yet that little telescope is to-day among 
the famous ones of the world, having made 
memorable advances in the astronomy of 
double stars and shown its owner to bea 
worthy successor of the Herschels and the 
Struves in that line of work. 
A hundred observers might have used the 
appliances of the Lick Observatory for a 
whole generation without finding the fifth 
satellite of Jupiter; without successfully 
photographing the cloud forms of the Milky 
Way; without discovering the extraordinary 
patches of nebulous light, nearly or quite 
invisible to the human eye, which fill some 
regions of the heavens. 
When I was in Zurich last year I paid a 
visit to the little but not unknown observa- 
tory of its famous polytechnic school. The 
professor of astronomy was especially in- 
terested in the observations of the sun with 
the aid of the spectroscope, and among the 
ingenious devices which he deseribed, not 
the least interesting was the method of 
photographing the sun by special rays of 
the spectrum which had been worked out 
at the Kenwood Observatory in Chicago. 
The Kenwood Observatory is not, I be- 
lieve, in the eye of the public one of the 
