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occurred which might well have exhausted his energy, seeing 
that the dates of his renewed and for awhile useless appeals 
were 1836, 1838, 1840, and 1842. 
Passing over many circumstances in the history of these 
transactions, not as being without interest, but because space 
will not permit of their being presented here, we may proceed 
to the time when the actual erection of the buildings was com- 
menced. This was in 1843, or no less than thirty-three years after 
the plan for an observatory was first proposed, so that fully one half 
of the period which has elapsed since Lambert of Virginia first 
called his countrymen’s attention to the necessity of establishing 
a national observatory was lost in discussions and delays. At 
the close of September 1844 the new building was ready for 
occupancy, and the instruments were adjusted. 
From 1844 to 1861 the Washington Observatory was under 
the superintendence of Lieutenant Maury. In September 1 846 
the first volume of Observations was issued. Its value has been 
thus described by an impartial and competent judge. “Besides 
a fair amount of observations with the two transit instru- 
ments in the meridian and the prime vertical, and those with 
the mural circle, it contained various important investigations 
of the errors and corrections peculiar to the instruments : Pro- 
fessor Coffin’s masterly discussion of the adjustments of the mural 
circle, and his expansion of Bessel’s Refraction Tables ; Walker’s 
investigation of the latitude of the observatory, and his com- 
parison of the standard thermometers ; all of great value.” 
In the second volume reference was made to the discovery of 
Neptune, and the success of Mr. Walker, one of the assistants, 
in detecting amongst Lalande’s observations two of Neptune 
on May 8 and 10, 1795, when the planet was observed and 
recorded as a fixed star. “Astronomers were thus furnished 
with an observation of Neptune made 52 years before, which 
afforded the means of a most accurate determination of the orbit, 
and enabled the superintendent of the American Nautical 
Almanac to publish an ephemeris of the new planet two years 
in advance of all other parts of the Almanac. The observatory 
was first brought into prominence by these researches .” In 
October 1849 Lieutenant (now Rear-Admiral) Davis wrote as 
follows to the Hon. Secretary of the Navy on this subject. 
“ The theory of Neptune belongs, by right of precedence, to 
American science. In connection with its neighbour, Uranus, it 
constitutes an open field of astronomical research, into which 
the astronomers and mathematicians of the United States have 
been the first to enter, and to occupy distinguished places.” 
Deprecating heartily, though I do, all reference to priority or 
nationality in such matters, as opposed to the true scientific 
spirit, I cannot but note how Professor Newcomb, by his admir- 
