ASPECTS OF AMERICAN ASTRONOMY. 93 



One deplorable result of the civil war was that Gould's Astronomical 

 Journal had to be suspended. Shortly after the restoration of peace, 

 instead of reestablishing the journal, its founder conceived the project 

 of exploring- the southern heavens. The northern hemisphere being 

 the seat of civilization, that portion of the sky which could not be 

 seen from our latitudes was comparatively neglected. What had been 

 done in the southern hemisphere was mostly the occasional work of 

 individuals and of one or two permanent observatories. The latter 

 were so few in number and so meager in their outfit that a splendid 

 field was open to the inquirer. Grould found the patron which he 

 desired in the government of the Argentine Eepublic, on whose terri- 

 tory he erected what must rank in the future as one of the memorable 

 astronomical establishments of the world. His work affords a most 

 striking example of the principle that the astronomer is more impor- 

 tant than his instruments. ISTot only were the means at the command of 

 the Argentine Observatory slender in the extreme when compared with 

 those of the favored institutions of the North, but, from the very 

 nature of the case, the Argentine Eepublic could not supply trained 

 astronomers. The difiiculties thus growing out of the administration 

 can not be overestimated. And yet the sixteen great volumes in 

 which the work of the institution has been published will rank in the 

 future among the classics of astronomy. 



Another wonderful focus of activity, in which one hardly knows 

 whether he ought most to admire the exhaustless energy or the admir- 

 able ingenuity which he finds displayed, is the Harvard Observatory. 

 Its work has been aided by gifts which have no parallel iu the liberal- 

 ity that prompted them. Yet without energy and skill such gifts 

 would have been useless. The activity of the establishment includes 

 both hemispheres. Time would fail to tell how it has not only mapped 

 out important regions of the heavens from the north to the south pole, 

 but analyzed the rays of light which come from hundreds of thousands 

 of stars by recording their spectra in permanence on photographic 

 plates. 



The work of the establishment is so organized that a new star can 

 not appear in any part of the heavens nor a known star undergo any 

 noteworthy change without immediate detection by the photographic 

 eye of one or more little telescopes, all-seeing and never sleeping police- 

 men that scan the heavens unceasingly while the astronomer may 

 sleep, and report in the morning every case of irregularity in the pro- 

 ceedings of the heavenly bodies. 



Yet another example, showing what great results may be obtained 

 with limited means, is aftbrded by the Lick Observatory, on Mount 

 Hamilton, Oal. During the ten years of its activity its astronomers 

 have made it known the world over by works and discoveries too varied 

 and numerous to be even mentioned at the present time. 



The astronomical work of which I have thus far spoken has been 

 almost entirely that done at observatories. I fear that I may in this 



