48 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
endowed by the Czar Nicholas in 1839, and has won high renown on astronomi- 
cal annals for the work it has already accomplished under its first director, the 
eminent astronomer Wilhelm Struve, as well as under his son, Otto Struve, who 
became director in 1864, upon the death of his distinguished father, and still 
holds the honorable position. 
The Russian Government was not satisfied with the capacity and size of the 
present working force of the observatory, and determined to have a new refract- 
ing telescope constructed which, in mechanism and optic power, should surpass 
any telescope in existence. The director (Struve) was commissioned to carry out 
the plan. The most perfect workmanship attainable was to be put in requisition, 
and Struve chose from all the world, for the execution of the difficult and deli- 
cate task, the Messrs. Alvan Clark & Sons, the famous telescope-makers of Cam- 
bridgeport, Mass. 
Struve came to this country and intrusted to their skillful hands the making 
of the object-glass, with a diameter of thirty inches, and its cell. The mounting 
of the great telescope is being made in Hamburg, Germany, by Messrs. Repsold 
& Sons. The Pulkowa object-glass is four inches larger than that of the Wash- 
ington telescope, finished in 1873, ^^^ seven inches larger than that of the simi- 
lar instrument recently completed for the Princeton Observatory, both telescopes 
being the work of the same makers. The arrangements with Messrs. Clark were 
made in the summer of 1881, and the great objective was completed in October, 
1882. 
A temporary equatorial stand was erected in the yard of the workshop, in 
order to test the quality, power and perfection of the glass. It consists of a pier 
of solid masonry, to which a tube of sheet-iron, made in three sections, is firmly 
fixed, with the necessary mounting to secure its movement in the required direc- 
tion. The object-glass, the eye pieces and other appurtenances being then placed 
in position, the great refractor was ready to show its working power and to reveal 
any slight imperfections in the polish or finish that required attention. The pre- 
cious glass bore the testing process with triumphant success, and is pronounced by 
the makers to be the best that has left their hands. 
But the supremacy of the Russian telescope as the largest of its kind in the 
world will be of short duration. The same trial mounting will be used by the 
Messrs. Clark for testing the thirty-six inch object-glass which they have engaged 
to make for the Lick Observatory of California, 
The pier of the temporary structure is twenty-seven feet in height ; the tube 
is forty-five feet in length, with an aperture of forty inches in diameter. Fig- 
ures, however, give a faint idea of this giant structure. It must be seen looming 
up under the sky before its huge dimensions can be realized. A view of the 
heavens through its great eye must be taken before its wondrous light- gathering 
power can be imagined. 
The evening of our observation is intensely cold, but the sky is undimmed 
by the shadow of a cloud, the atmosphere is free from a breath of moisture. The 
heavens present a scene of exceeding beauty as the party of observers take their 
