the history of American science.  The country was still almost wholly deficient in instrumental power; but the want was generally felt by men of science, and the public mind in various parts of the country began to be turned towards the means of supplying it.  In 1825, President John Quincy Adams brought the subject of a National Observatory before Congress.  Political considerations prevented its being favorably entertained at that time; and it was not till 1842, and as an incident of the exploring expedition, that an appropriation was made for a depot for the charts and instruments of the Navy.  On this modest basis has been reared the National Observatory at Washington; an institution which has already taken and fully sustains an honorable position among the scientific establishments of the age.

Besides the institution at Washington, fifteen or twenty observatories have within the last few years, been established in different parts of the country, some of them on a modest scale, for the gratification of the scientific taste and zeal of individuals, others on a broad foundation of expense and usefulness.  In these establishments, public and private, the means are provided for the highest order of astronomical observation, research, and instruction.  There is already in the country an amount of instrumental power (to which addition is constantly making), and of mathematical skill on the part of our men of science, adequate to a manly competition with their European contemporaries.  The fruits are already before the world, in the triangulation of several of the States, in the great work of the Coast Survey, in the numerous scientific surveys of the interior of the Continent, in the astronomical department of the Exploring Expedition, in the scientific expedition to Chili, in the brilliant hydrographical labors of the Observatory at Washington, in the published observations of Washington and Cambridge, in the Journal conducted by the Nestor of American Science, now in its eighth lustrum; in the Sidereal Messenger, the Astronomical Journal, and the National Ephemeris; in the great chronometrical expeditions to determine the longitude of Cambridge, better ascertained than that of Paris was till within the last year; in the prompt rectification of the errors in the predicted elements of Neptune; in its identification with Lalande’s missing star, and in the calculation of its ephemeris; in the discovery of the satellite of Neptune, of the eighth satellite of Saturn, and of the innermost of its rings; in the establishment, both by observation and theory, of the non-solid character of Saturn’s rings; in the separation and measurement of many double and triple stars, amenable only to superior instrumental power, in the immense labor already performed in preparing star catalogues, and in numerous accurate observations of standard stars; in the diligent and successful observation of the meteoric showers; in an extensive series of magnetic observations; in the discovery