* * * * *

The extract concerning his visit to the Pumping-Engines at Haarlem is as follows: 

LEYDEN,
1851, August 20, Wednesday.

I went to see the great North Holland Canal, and went a mile or two in a horse-drawn-boat upon it:  a very comfortable conveyance.  Saw windmills used for sawing timber and other purposes, as well as some for grinding and many for draining.  Yesterday at half-past one I went by railway to Haarlem.  I did not look at anything in the town except going through it and seeing that it is a curious fantastic place, but I drove at once to the burgomaster to ask permission to visit one of the three great pumping engines for draining the immense Haarlem lake, and then drove to it.  Imagine a round tower with a steam-cylinder in its center; and the piston which works up-and-down, instead of working one great beam as they usually do, works eight, poking out on different sides of the round tower, and each driving a pump 6 feet in diameter.  I am glad to have seen it.  Then by railway here.

* * * * *

1852

“Galvanic communication was now established with Lewisham station (thus giving power of communicating with London, Deal, &c.).—­From the Report to the Board of Visitors it appears that, in the case of the Transit Circle, the azimuth of the Instrument as determined by opposite passages of the Pole Star had varied four seconds; and in the case of the Altazimuth, there was a discordance in the azimuthal zeros of the Instrument, as determined from observations of stars.  In both cases it was concluded that the discordances arose from small movements of the ground.—­Under the head of ‘General Remarks’ in the Report, the following paragraph occurs:  ’It will be perceived that the number of equatoreal observations made here at present is small:  and that they are rarely directed to new comets and similar objects which sometimes excite considerable interest.  This omission is intentional.  It is not because the instrumental means are wanting (for our Equatoreals, though not comparable to those of either Cambridge, or of Pulkowa, are fully equal to those usually directed to such objects), but it is because these observations are most abundantly supplied from other observatories, public and private, and because the gain to those observations from our taking a part in them would, probably, be far less than the loss to the important class of observations which we can otherwise follow so well.  Moreover, I am unwilling to take any step which could be interpreted as attempting to deprive the local and private observatories of honours which they have so nobly earned.  And, finally, in this act of abstinence, I am desirous of giving an example of adhesion to one principle which, I am confident, might be extensively followed with great advantage to astronomy:—­the principle of division of labour.’—­Discoveries of small