I 



OBSERVATORY AT CORDOBA, ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 267 



Academy of Sciences, the States-General of Hollaud, and the Prince 

 of Orange. With but one assistant, and only eraployiug a little tele- 

 scope half an inch in aperture and twenty-eight inches in focal length, 

 strapped to the tube of a mural quadrant, he succeeded in determin- 

 ing the positions of 9,766 stars, between the tropic aud the pole, in 

 the short period of less than eleven months ; but his observations were 

 not published until eleven years later, and then in so crude a form that 

 they were with difficulty available until about a quarter-century ago, 

 when they were computed and published, like those of La Laude, at the 

 expense of the British government. These have till now been a prin- 

 cipal reliance of astronomers for their knowledge of the southern 

 heavens. I may not dilate on what has been done elsewhere; at Para- 

 matta, where the observations, though laboriously made, have rendered 

 comparatively little service to science ; at Madras, 13° north of the 

 equator, where Taylor made excellent observations of some 6,01)0 southern 

 stars 5 at the Cape of Good Hope, where observations of great precision 

 and value have been made by various eminent men, and where Sir John 

 Herschel devoted seven years to forming a catalogue of nebulas and 

 double stars; at Saint Helena, where Johnson, one of the most skillful 

 and delicate observers of our times, fixed the position of 606 southern 

 stars ; or of the observatory established at Melbourne twenty years ago, 

 from which have emanated observations of the highest quality, and 

 where the director, Mr. Ellery, has commenced a grand study of the 

 southern heavens, upon a different plan from mine in Cordoba, aud for 

 a difierent purpose. To Gilliss's labors in Chile I have already alluded, 

 and at the observatory of Santiago, in that republic, the places of a 

 considerable number of stars have been determined by him and his 

 successors. 



Such, my friends, were the circumstances as they presented them- 

 selves a few years ago. Argelander's explorations reached only to 31° 

 south, which is but 8° above his horizon, and where his observations 

 were not only difficult, but subject to serious embarrassments from the 

 excessive influence of refraction. Beyond this, no systematic series, 

 aiming at both accuracy in the positions and tolerable completeness, 

 had been attempted since Lacaille's, with poor instruments, a century 

 and a quarter ago, unless we except Gilliss's unpublished observations 

 around the south pole, which future astronomers may or may not see. 

 The only other observations available were the scattered ones already 

 mentioned, in which the aim had been not to fix the places of many 

 stars, so much as by repeated observations of some principal ones to 

 obtain for these the highest accuracy. In all, I scarcely think they 

 included more than about 12,000 different stars. 



Information from various sources having led me to believe that the 

 climate ot Cordoba, midway between the Atlantic and Pacific, and 

 exempt alike from the frequent tornadoes of the one coast and the 

 earthquakes of the other, was especially favorable for astronomical 



