OBSERVATORY. 
Surveyor General of the Ordnance, the 
office of Astronomer Royal was placed un- 
der that department, in which it has con- 
tinued ever since. 
This observatory was at first furnished 
■with several very accurate instruments; par- 
ticularly a noble sextant of seven feet radius, 
with telescopic sights. And the first Astro- 
nomer Royal, or the person to w'hom the 
province of observing was first committed, 
was Mr. John Flamsteed ; a man who, as 
Dr. Halley expresses it, seemed born for 
the employment. During fourteen years 
he watched the motions of the planets with 
unwearied diligence, especially those of the 
moon, as was given him in charge ; that a 
new theory of that planet being found, 
shewing all her irregularities, the longitude 
might thence be determined. In the year 
1690, having provided himself with a mural 
arch of near seven feet radius, made by his 
assistant, Mr. Abraham .Sharp, and fixed in 
the plane of the meridian, he began to verify 
his catalogue of the fixed stars, which had 
hithei'to depended altogether on the dis- 
tances measured with the sextant^ after a 
new and very different manner, viz. by tak- 
ing the meridian altitudes, and tiie moments 
of culmination, or in other words, the right 
ascension and declination. And he was so 
well pleased with this instrument that he 
discontinued al,inost entirely the use of the 
sextant. Thus, in the space of upwards of 
forty years, the Astronomer Royal collect- 
ed an immense number of good observa- 
tions ; which may be found in his “ Historia 
Coelestis Britannica, published in 1725 ; 
the principal part of which is the Biitannic 
Catalogue of the fixed stars. 
Mr. Flamsteed, on bis death in 1719, was 
siicceeiled by Dr. Halley, and he by Dr. 
Bradley in 1742, and this last by Mr. Bliss 
in 1762; but none of the observations of 
these gentlemen have yet been given to the 
public. 
On the demise of Mr. Bliss, in 1765, he 
was succeeded by Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, the 
present Astronomer Royal, whose valuable 
observations have been published, from time 
to time, under the direction of the Royal 
Society, in several folio volumes. 
The Greenwich Observatory is found, 
by very accurate observations, to lie in 
51° 28' 40 " north latitude, as settled by Dr. 
Maskelyne, from many of Ids own observa- 
tions, as well as those of Dr. Bradley. 
The Paris Observatory was built by 
Louis the Fourteenth, in the Fauxbourg St. 
Jaqnes ; being began in 1664, and finished 
in 1672. It is a singular but magnificent 
building, of eighty feet in height, with a 
terrace at top ; and here M. de la Hire, M. 
Cassini, &c. the King’s Astronomers, have 
made their observations. Its latitude is 
48° 50' 14" north, and its longitude 9' 20" 
east of Greenwich Observatory. 
In the Observatory of Paris is a cave, or 
pit, 170 feet deep, with subterraneous pas- 
sages, for experiments that are to be made 
out of the reach of the sun, especially such 
as relate to congelations, refrigerations, &e. 
In this cave there is an old thermometer of 
M. de la Hire, which stands at all times at 
the same height ; thereby shewing that the 
temperature of the place remains always 
the same. From the top of the platform to 
the bottom of the cave is a perpendicular 
well or pit, used formerly for experiments 
on the fall of bodies ; being also a kind of 
long telescopical tube, through which the 
stars are seen at mid-day. 
Tycho Brahe’s Observatory was in the 
little island Ween, or the .Scarlet Island, 
between the coasts of Schonen and Zealand, 
in the Baltic Sea. Tlris observatory was 
not well situated for some kinds of observa- 
tions, particularly the risings and settings ; 
as it lay too low, and was land-locked on all 
the points of the compass except three ; 
and the land horizon being very rugged and 
uneven. 
Pekin Observatory. Father Le Comptc 
describes a very magnificient observatory, 
erected and furnished by the late Emperor 
of China, in his capital, at the intercession 
of some Jesuit missionaries, chiefly Father 
Verhest, whom he appointed his chief ob- 
server. The instruments here are exceed- 
ingly large ; but the divisions are less accu- 
rate, and, in some respects, the contrivance 
is less commodious than in those of the 
Europeans. The chief are, an armillary 
zodiacal sphere of six Paris feet diameter, 
an azimuthal horizon six feet diameter, a 
large quadrant six feet radius, a sextant 
eight feet radius, and a celestial globe six 
diameter. 
Bramin’s Observatory at Benares, in the 
East Indies, which is still one of the princi- 
pal seminaries of the Bramins, or priests of 
the origiiial Gentoos of Hindostan. This 
observatory at Benares it is said was built 
about 200 years since, by order of the Em- 
peror Ackbar : for as this wise prince en- 
deavoured to improve the arts, so he wished 
also to recover the sciences of Hindostan, 
and therefore ordered that three such places 
