Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 463 



mical work during the ten years 1861-1871, and its present equip- 

 ment and personnel are fully set forth. The original germ of the 

 observatory first came into existence in connexion with an occulta- 

 tion of r] Tauri observed near the President's house on October 20, 

 1804, from which Mr. Lambert determined the approximate longi- 

 tude of the capitol to be 76° 53' 6"-920 west from Greenwich. It 

 was between five and six years after the occurrence of this occul- 

 tation that a memorial was presented to the House of Representa- 

 tives urging the establishment of a first meridian at Washington. 

 From the presentation of a report on this memorial to the final 

 establishment of the observatory and its entering on its work in 

 1844, the reader is presented with a variety of interesting docu- 

 ments relative to the negotiations for this great national object, 

 which may be read with great advantage by all who cultivate astro- 

 nomy. The following extracts selected from amongst these docu- 

 ments will convey to the reader an idea of the appreciation of the 

 high value of astronomy by the American mind. 



" The express object of an observatory is the increase of know- 

 ledge by new discovery. The physical relations between the firma- 

 ment of heaven and the globe allotted by the Creator of all to be 

 the abode of man are discoverable only by the organ of the eye. 

 Many of these relations are indispensable to the existence of human 

 life, and perhaps of the earth itself. Who can conceive the idea 

 of a world without a sun, but must connect with it the extinction 

 of light and heat, of all animal life, of all vegetation and produc- 

 tion, leaving the lifeless clod of matter to return to the primitive 

 state of chaos, or to be consumed by elemental fire ? The influ- 

 ence of the moon, of the planets — our next-door neighbours of the 

 solar system — of the fixed stars scattered over the blue expanse in 

 multitudes exceeding the power of human computation, and at dis- 

 tances of which imagination herself can form no distinct concep- 

 tion ; the influence of all these upon the globe which we inhabit 

 and upon the condition of man, its dying and deathless inhabitant, 

 is great and mysterious, and, in search for final causes, to a great 

 degree inscrutable to his finite and limited faculties. The extent 

 to which they are discoverable is, and must remain unknown ; but 

 to the vigilance of a sleepless eye, to the toil of a tireless hand, and 

 to the meditations of a thinking, combining, and analyzing mind 

 secrets are successively revealed, not only of the deepest import to 

 the welfare of man in his earthly career, but which seem to lift him 

 from the earth to the threshold of his eternal abode, to lead him 

 blindfold up to the Council Chamber of Omnipotence, and there 

 stripping the bandage from his eyes, bid him look undazzled at 

 the throne of God." 



" It is to the successive discoveries of persevering astronomical 

 observation through a period of fifty centuries that we are indebted 

 for a fixed and permanent standard for the measurement of time ; 

 and by the same science has man acquired, so far as he possesses 

 it, a standard for the measurement of space. A standard for the 



