ASPECTS OP AMERICAN ASTRONOMY. 95 



rerednctioii of the observations made during the first half of the present 

 century, and even during the last half of the preceding one. The labor 

 which could ]jrofitably be devoted to this work would be more than that 

 required in any one astronomical observatory. It is unfortunate for this 

 work that a great building is not required for its prosecution because 

 its needfulness is thus very generally overlooked by that portion of the 

 public interested in the progress of science. An organization especially 

 devoted to it is one of the scientific needs of our time. 



In such an epoch-making age as the present it is dangerous to cite 

 any one step as making a new epoch. Yet it may be that when the 

 historian of the future reviews the science of our day he will find the 

 most remarkable feature of the astronomy of the last twenty years of 

 our century to be the discovery that this steadfast earth of which the 

 poets have told us is not after all quite steadfast; that the north and 

 south poles move about a very little, describing curves so complicated 

 that they have not yet been fully marked out. The periodic variations 

 of latitude thus brought about were first suspected about 1880, and 

 aniiounced with some modest assurance by Kiistner, of Berlin, a few 

 years later. The progress of the views of astronomical opinion from 

 incredulity to confidence was extremely slow until, about 1890, Chan- 

 dler, of the United States, by an exhaustive discussion of innumerable 

 results of observations, showed that the latitude of every point on the 

 earth was subject to a double oscillation, one having a period of a year, 

 the other of four hundred and twenty-seven days. 



^Notwithstanding the remarkable parallel between the growth of 

 American astronomy and that of your city, one can not but fear that 

 if a foreign observer had been asked only half a dozen years ago at 

 what jDoint in the United States a great school of theoretical and prac- 

 tical 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 

 replied that were it possible to utilize celestial knowledge in acquir- 

 ing 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 reflect that wealth is at the base of all progress in knowl- 

 edge and the liberal arts ; that it is only when men are relieved from 

 the necessity of devoting all their energies to the immediate wants of 

 life that they can lead intellectual lives, and that we should therefore 

 look to the most enterprising commercial 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 astronomers who may be associated with it. 

 You will, I am sure, j)ardon me if I make some suggestions on the subject 

 of the future needs of the establishment. We want this newly founded 



