93::! 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 129. 



Pourtales, Boutelle, Hilgard, Schott, Good- 

 fellow, Cutts, Davidson and otliers. 



Silliman's (& Dana's) American Journal 

 of Science had been founded at New Haven 

 in 1818, and served as a medium of com- 

 munication among scientific men. A great 

 step forward was made in the establish- 

 ment of the Astronomical Journal by Dr. 

 Gould on his return from Europe at the 

 close of 1849.* Silliman's Journal was 

 chiefly concerned with the non-mathemat- 

 ical sciences ; though it has always con- 

 tained valuable papers on mathematics, 

 astronomy and physics, especially from the 

 observers of Yale College — Olmsted, Her- 

 rick, Bradley, Norton, Newton, Lyman and 

 others. In Mason, who died in 1840 at the 

 age of 21, the country lost a practical 

 astronomer of the highest promise. f Gould's 

 Journal was an organ devoted to a special 

 science. It not only gave a convenient 

 means of prompt publication, but it imme- 

 diately quickened research and helped to 

 enforce standards already established and 

 to form new ones. The Asti-onornical Notices 

 of Bruennow (1858-62) might have been an 

 exceedingly useful journal with an editor 

 who was willing to give more attention to 

 details, but, in spite of Bruennow's charm- 

 ing personality and great ability, it had 

 comparatively little influence on the prog- 

 ress of the science. 



The translation of the Mecanique Celeste of 

 Laplace by Nathaniel Bowditch, the super- 

 cargo of a Boston ship (1815-17), marks the 

 beginning of an independent mathematical 

 school in America. The first volume of the 

 translation appeared in 1829 ; at that time 

 there were not more than two or three per- 

 sons in the country who could read it criti- 

 cally. The works of the great mathemati- 

 cians and astronomers of France and Ger- 

 many — Laplace, Lagrange, Legendre, 



*The AstronomiscJie Nachrichien had been founded 

 in Altona, by Schumacher, in 1821. 



fSee fhe International Beview, Vol. X., p. 585. 



Olbers, Gauss, W. Struve, Bessel — were al- 

 most entirely unknown. 



Bowditch's translation of the Mecanique 

 Celeste, and, still more, his extended com- 

 mentary, brought this monumental work to 

 the attention of students and within their 

 grasp. His Practical Navigator^ contained the 

 latest and best methods for determining the 

 position of a ship at sea, expressed in 

 simple rules. American navigators had no 

 superiors in the first half of this century. 

 Nantucket whalers covered the Pacific, 

 Salem ships swarmed in the Indies, and the 

 clipper-ships made passages round the 

 Horn to San Francisco, which are a wonder 

 to-day. Part of their success is due to the. 

 bold enterprise of their captains (who were 

 said to carry deck-loads of studding-sail 

 booms to replace those carried away !) , but 

 an important part depended on their skill 

 as observers with the sextant. One of the 

 sister ships to the one of which Bowditch was 

 supercargo was visited at Genoa by a Euro- 

 pean astronomer of note (Baron de Zach) , 

 who found that the latest methods of work- 

 ing lunar distances to determine the longi- 

 tude were known to all on board, sailors 

 as well as ofiicers. His bewilderment 

 reached its climax when the navigator 

 called the negro cook from the galley and 

 bade him expound the methods of determin- 

 ing the longitude to the distinguished 

 visitor. 



On Bowditch's own ship there was " a 

 crew of twelve men, everyone of whom 

 could take and work a lunar observation as 

 well, for all practical purposes, as Sir Isaac 

 Newton himself." Such crews were only to 

 be found on American ships in the palmy 

 days of democracy. All were cousins or 



* First edition, 1802. Sumner's method in navi- 

 gation (1843) — a very original and valuable contri- 

 bution from a Boston sea-captain — and Maury's 

 Wind and Current Charts, begun in 1844, are two 

 other notable contributions from a young country to 

 an art as old as commerce. 



