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Transactions of the Boyal Society of South Africa. 
science the servant of the man. Naturally such men come in groups, 
and so round Gill and of his day, and manner of thought, were Gould and 
Newcomb, Huggins and Darwin. 
Distinctive as was the special piece of research of each of these 
pioneers, their outlook was ever comprehensive enough to lift their 
thoughts out of the narrower region in which they worked, out to where 
the whole area of astronomical progress w^as manifest and clearly defined. 
It was this spaciousness of vision which so distinguished Gill as an 
astronomer, and made him unique in his day as an observer. 
For while in certain branches of astronomical study his knowledge 
was peculiarly full and immediate, while his keen eye, his steady hand, 
his tireless resolution and energy, marked him out as a capable observer, 
it was the vastness of his range of thought, the illumination and sug- 
gestiveness of his judgment, that impressed men most. 
A complete master of the details of any investigation, however com- 
plex and involved, a w^orker who never shirked the labour, however 
colossal, necessary to the marshalling and reducing of great aggregations, 
of facts and figures, yet behind the details and behind the facts and 
the figures lay the cosmic truths which his mind ever brooded over, and 
which his inner vision from the hill-tops of his beloved science saw 
and comprehended. 
David Gill was more than an observer — he was a seer. 
And so his thought was never circumscribed by the task that occupied 
him. Was it a photograph he was taking ? It was part of a great scheme 
some day to be realized of photographing the whole sky. Was it a 
stellar parallax that he laboured at ? — He saw it as a step only in the 
gauging of the whole stellar universe. Was it the constant of aberration 
that claimed his attention ? — Forthwith it was related to the constitution of 
the ether, and to the relation of the ether to bodies passing through it. 
Was it a base line he was measuring out on the Cape Flats ? — At once 
there rose up a whole chain of sequences, the earth's ellipticity, the moon's 
parallax, the constant of gravity. His was the faculty of ever relating 
the part to the whole. 
We have barely referred to his knowledge of instrumental equipment. 
There was scarcely an instrument used in an observatory with which he 
was not abundantly familiar. The articles on " The Telescope," " The 
Micrometer" in the Enc3^clopaedia Britannica are from his pen. He 
was regarded both in Europe and America as the leading authority on 
these matters. 
Many of the most valuable improvements in practical astronomy 
during the past twenty years are due to his skill or experience. He 
never found a good l)ut he wanted to make it better, a better but he 
desired to have it the best. Clocks, micrometers, measuring machines, 
