OBITUARY NOTICES. 
489 
At the close of the summer vacation of 1880 he came 
again to the university as special student and private tutor, 
but only for a brief interval. In January, 1881, he came to 
Washington and entered the Bureau of Weights and Meas¬ 
ures, in the office of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. In this 
work as verifier of weights and measures, for which his talent 
and training so well fitted him, he remained nearly five 
years, resigning his place December 1,1885. It was during 
this interval that he became known to and a member of the 
Philosophical Society, which he joined December 16, 1882. 
An occasional participant in the discussions in the Society, 
his chief activity was, however, manifested in the mathe¬ 
matical section, in the work of which he was more especially 
interested. While employed in the Bureau of Weights and 
Measures he also undertook, beginning June 1, 1883, the 
measurement of the star photographs made by Dr. B. A. 
Gould at the Argentine National Observatory, at Cordoba, 
South America. This work he continued to prosecute after 
leaving the Weights and Measures Bureau, and brought it 
to a successful conclusion a few months before his death. 
For facilitating these measures he devised and had partially 
completed an instrument, which his sudden death has left 
incomplete. 
After leaving Washington he returned to Cambridge, and 
continued his work upon the star photographs of Dr. Gould. 
At the same time he entered the Theological Department of 
Boston University with a view to entering the ministry, for 
which he had always evinced a strong liking. For some 
time it had been his wish and his purpose to enter the An¬ 
dover Theological Seminary. Indeed, for a number of years 
he had been privately pursuing his theological studies in 
connection with his other work. In 1887, after pursuing 
theological studies for a year in Boston University, he ap¬ 
pears to have finally decided the question as to whether 
theology or science should be his vocation by giving up his 
theological studies and devoting his energies to scientific 
work. He became a member of the Mathematical and Phys- 
G3—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 11. 
