998 
himself compelled to mention. It cannot be 
called a history of American astronomy for the 
quarter of a century in question, but Professor 
Holden has furnished, with the help of the 
family of the Bonds, a valuable contribution 
thereto. 
The most troublesome part of the author’s 
task has been to rightly explain the long and 
persistent unfriendliness of prominent American 
astronomers to the new institution and its con- 
ductors. W.C. Bond was one of those quiet 
artists who so often do admirable service to the 
science in an unpretending way without mak- 
ing claim to the position of a great theoretical 
astronomer. 
The first difficult task for Professor Holden 
has been to give the history of chronographic 
registration and the part of the Bonds in the 
invention. 
Wilkes in 1844 (p. 239) made the first experi- 
ment for determining longitude by the electric 
telegraph between Washington and Baltimore. 
Sears C. Walker, a most able astronomer, gives 
in Silliman’s Journal, Second Series, Vol. VIL., 
pages 206 to 217, a report to Dr. A. D. Bache, 
then Superintendent of the Coast Survey, in 
which the history of the first experiments in 
chronographic registration is well told. Pro- 
fessor Holden mentions the subsequent experi- 
ments of 1847 and 1848 to render the tele- 
graphic method thoroughly practicable for 
longitude determinations. 
In Loomis’s ‘ Recent Progress of Astronomy ’ 
(New York, 1850) we find the actual results of 
the longitude operations of the summer of 1847 
conducted between Philadelphia, Washington 
and Jersey City, from which Loomis draws the 
inference: ‘‘ These experiments seem to au- 
thorize the conclusion that the electric tele- 
graph affords the best means for the determina- 
tion of terrestrial longitude between places in 
telegraphic connection with each other.’’ This 
inference of Loomis has been confirmed by 
subsequent experience. 
Walker, in his article before cited, mentions 
the experiments of Locke, Mitchell and others, 
and dwells greatly on the merit of the proposed 
‘automatic clock register,’ and of the principle 
of chronographic registration for all time-ob- 
servations. 
SCIENCE. 
LN. S. Vou. VI. No. 157. 
Locke’s partin the experiment seems to have 
been to arrange, under Walker’s direction, ap- 
paratus for making and breaking circuit with- 
out damage to the clock. Mitchel, on the other 
hand, suggested a form of chronograph not 
suitable in Walker’s opinion for nice as- 
tronomical observations. 
The apparatuses of both Locke and Mitchel 
were tried in 1848 under Walker’s direc- 
tion. On the whole, Professor Holden has well 
stated the history ; some points are obscure in 
all the accounts, and it requires a careful read- 
ing and putting together of the literature of the 
subject to rightly assign priority in the differ- 
ent parts of the invention, in which howsoever 
we combine the materials ; the principal figures 
are Walker and W. ©. Bond, and the subordi- 
nate ones are Locke and Mitchel. 
Bond’s chronograph was exhibited at the 
Great Exposition of 1851 in London, and dis- 
tinguished with a gold medal. These circum- 
stances seem to have led to the introduction of 
chronographic registration at Greenwich in 
1854, Thence it spread rather slowly over the 
Continent; it was adopted for standard right 
ascension at Pulkova in 1861, but the eye and 
ear method was still retained there for polar stars 
and secondary catalogues, in which it has some 
advantages, especially in respect of personal 
equations. In America the chronographic 
method has been used quite generally, and the 
Bond chronograph has become a standard in- 
strument. It has been used at the Harvard 
College Observatory from its first construction 
in 1850 to the present time. It served for the 
zone 50°-55° of the catalogue of the As- 
tronomische Gesellschaft, as well as for the 
Bonds’ own zones of small stars observed in 
1852-53, and other work executed during their 
successive directorships and later. ‘ 
Other difficult matters of the history of the 
Observatory are stated by Professor Holden 
with due regard for the feelings of the repre- 
sentatives of the astronomers of the last 
generation. The Perkins professor of as- 
tronomy when W. C. Bond removed to Cam- 
bridge in 1838 and began the duties of his 
office was Benjamin Peirce, one of the most 
eminent mathematical astronomers of his day. 
It is rather difficult, as Professor Holden im- 
