previous suggestions, with such unflinching magnanimity, we promise you our earnest and hearty cooperation, and stake our reputation that the scientific success shall fill up the measure of your hopes and anticipations.”

For the attainment of an object so rich in scientific reward and national glory, guaranteed by men with reputations as exalted and enduring as the skies upon which they are written, contributions should be general, and not confined to an individual or a place.

For myself, I offer, as my part of the required endowment, the sum of $50,000 in addition to the advances which I have already made; and, trusting that the name which you have given to the Observatory may not be regarded as an undeserved compliment, and that it will not diminish the public regard by giving to the institution a seemingly individual character,

I remain, Gentlemen, your obedient servant,
Blandina Dudley.

Judge Harris then introduced the Orator of the occasion, Hon. Edward Everett, whose speech is given verbatim in these pages.

The instruments of the Dudley observatory.

During the Sessions of the American Association, the new Astronomical Instruments of Dudley Observatory were described in detail by Dr. B. A. Gould, who is the Astronomer in charge.  We condense his statements:—­

The Meridian Circle and Transit instrument were ordered from Pistor & Martins, the celebrated manufacturers of Berlin, by whom the new instrument at Ann Arbor was made.  A number of improvements have been introduced in the Albany instruments, not perhaps all absolutely new, but an eclectic combination of late adaptations with new improvements.  Dr. Gould made a distinction of modern astronomical instruments into two classes, the English and the German.  The English is the massive type; the German, light and airy.  The English instrument is the instrument of the engineer; the German, the instrument of the artist.  In ordering the instruments for the Albany Observatory, the Doctor preferred the German type and discarded the heavier English.  He instanced, as a specimen of the latter, the new instrument at Greenwich, recently erected under the superintendence of the Astronomer Royal.  That instrument registers observations in single seconds; the Dudley instrument will register to tenths of seconds.  That has six or eight microscopes; this has four.  That has a gas lamp, by the light of which the graduations are read off; the Albany instrument has no lamp, and the Doctor considered the lamp a hazardous experiment, affecting the integrity of the experiment, not only by its radiant heat but by the currents of heated air which it produces.  The diameter of the object-glass of the Albany instrument is 7-1/2 French inches clear aperture, or 8 English inches, and the length of the tube 8 feet.