592 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol.. XVIir. No. 462. 



came convinced of its identity with Hawaii. 

 The charts attached to the early edi- 

 tions of Cook's 'Voyages' placed Kealake- 

 kua Bay at 156° 00', or. 18 s. too far west. 

 Although chronometers were put into use 

 prior to 1714, as late es 1762 John Harri- 

 son won a reward of 20,000 pounds from 

 the British government for having con- 

 structed a chronometer which, according to 

 the test made, determined the difference of 

 longitude of Portsmouth, England, and 

 Jamaica within eighteen miles. The prize 

 m question was offered in 1714, and it 

 took 47 years to make sufficient improve- 

 ments in chronometers to win it. Captain 

 Cook's error of only 18 s., or four and one 

 half miles in the longitude of Honolulu 

 was, therefore, remarkably small for that 

 time. 



Captain Vancouver, in 1790, adopted the 

 same longitude of Kealakekua as Captain 

 Cook, viz., 156° 00'. The true longitude 

 of Cook's observatory there is about 155° 

 55' 30". Vancouver gives for the longi- 

 tude of his anchorage off Waikiki, Oahu, 

 157° 50' 23" w., which is only half a mile 

 too far west, and for Wiamea, Kauai, 159° 

 40' w., which is probably within a quarter 

 of a mile of the true longitude. 



Captain Freycinet, of the scientific ex- 

 ploring ship L'Vranie, in 1819, made the 

 longitude of Kealakekua 156° 04' 23". 5 w. 

 from Greenwich, which is 36 s. too far west. 

 He made the longitude of HonoMu 157° 

 51' 46".2 w. from Greenwich, which is 

 about 1 s. too far east. 



Commodore Chas. "Wilkes, of the U. S. 

 exploring expedition, in 1840, adopted Cap- 

 tain Cook's longitude of Kealakakua Bay, 

 viz., 156° 00' w., and placed Honolulu at 

 157° 54' w., and Waimea, Kauai, at 159° 

 44' 30", both of them 8 s. too far west. 



During the years 1845-6 the late Pro- 

 fessor Chester S. Lyman, afterwards a 

 professor at Yale University, who was 



then residing in Honolulu for his health, 

 assisted Mr. David Flitner, chronometer 

 maker, in establishing a small observatory 

 here, and made a series of meridional ob- 

 servations of the moon, in order to deter- 

 mine the longitude. The result he ob- 

 tained, using the predicted places of the 

 moon in the American 'Ephemeris,' was 

 10 h. 37 m. 15 s. w., or 12 s. too far east. 



In the year 1868, M. Fleuriais, in the 

 service of the 'Bureau des Longitudes,' 

 who came to observe a transit of Mercury 

 at Honolulu, established an observatory 

 near the Catholic Cathedral, where he ob- 

 served nineteen meridional transits of the 

 moon's first limb, and eight of the second 

 limb. These observations are published in 

 detail in the appendix of the Comuiissance 

 des Temps for 1872. The result, as first 

 published, was 160° 10' 38" west of Paris, 

 or 157° 50' 23". 5 w. of Greenwich, or 5.4 

 s. too far east. 



But in No. 2586-7 of the Astronomische 

 Nachrichten, for April, 1884, we find a re- 

 duction of Fleuriais ' observations for longi- 

 tude, carried around the world in 1867- 

 70. On pages 345-6 are given the single 

 results obtained in Honolulu in October- 

 December, 1868, 27 in number, and the 

 longitude deduced from them is 10 h. 31 m. 

 25.59 s., or 1.3 s. too far east. These re- 

 sults were obtained by combining the ob- 

 servations at Honolulu with the actual ob- 

 servations of the moon 's place made during 

 the same period at Washington, Greenwich 

 and Paris. 



In September, 1874, Captain G. L. Tup- 

 man, Royal Marine Artillery, in charge of 

 the British Transit of Venus Expedition of 

 that year, arrived in Honolulu, and estab- 

 lished an observatory on Punchbowl Street, 

 near the shore, on practically the same 

 meridian as C. S. Lyman's observatory, 

 and 4". 79 west of Fleuriais' pier. No 

 pains were spared to ascertain the longi- 



