The generosity of Congress has provided in the present Naval Observatory the most magnificent and expensive astronomical establishment in the world.  It is being used for certain naval purposes which might easily and adequately be subserved by a small division connected with the Naval Department at only a fraction of the cost of the present Naval Observatory.  The official Board of Visitors established by Congress and appointed in 1901 expressed its conclusion that the official head of the observatory should be an eminent astronomer appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, holding his place by a tenure at least as permanent as that of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey or the head of the Geological Survey, and not merely by a detail of two or three years’ duration.  I fully concur in this judgment, and urge a provision by law for the appointment of such a director.

It may not be necessary to take the observatory out of the Navy Department and put it into another department in which opportunity for scientific research afforded by the observatory would seem to be more appropriate, though I believe such a transfer in the long run is the best policy.  I am sure, however, I express the desire of the astronomers and those learned in the kindred sciences when I urge upon Congress that the Naval Observatory be now dedicated to science under control of a man of science who can, if need be, render all the service to the Navy Department which this observatory now renders, and still furnish to the world the discoveries in astronomy that a great astronomer using such a plant would be likely to make.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE EXPEDITION IN LEGAL PROCEDURE

The deplorable delays in the administration of civil and criminal law have received the attention of committees of the American Bar Association and of many State Bar Associations, as well as the considered thought of judges and jurists.  In my judgment, a change in judicial procedure, with a view to reducing its expense to private litigants in civil cases and facilitating the dispatch of business and final decision in both civil and criminal cases, constitutes the greatest need in our American institutions.  I do not doubt for one moment that much of the lawless violence and cruelty exhibited in lynchings is directly due to the uncertainties and injustice growing out of the delays in trials, judgments, and the executions thereof by our courts.  Of course these remarks apply quite as well to the administration of justice in State courts as to that in Federal courts, and without making invidious distinction it is perhaps not too much to say that, speaking generally, the defects are less in the Federal courts than in the State courts.  But they are very great in the Federal courts.  The expedition with which business is disposed of both on the civil and the criminal side of English courts under modern rules of procedure makes the delays