this is solely to add to the sum of human knowledge, although not seldom
some application to man's physical needs springs unexpectedly from the
resulting discoveries, as in the case of the dynamo or that of wireless
telegraphy. Possibly a more accurate description of the moon's motion is
unlikely to bring forth any such application, but those who applaud the
achievements of our experts in mathematical astronomy would be quick to
deny that their fame rests on any such possibility.

Passing now to Professor Newcomb's "recreation," as he called,
it,--political economy, we may note that his contributions to it were
really voluminous, consisting of papers, popular articles and several
books, including "The A B C of Finance" (1877) and "Principles of
Political Economy" (1886). Authorities in the science never really took
these as seriously as they deserved, possibly because they regarded
Professor Newcomb as scarcely orthodox. Some of his distinctions, however,
are of undoubted value and will live; for instance, that between the fund
and the flux of wealth, on which he insists in his treatises on finance.
As to Professor Newcomb's single excursion into fiction, a romance
entitled "His Wisdom the Defender," it is perhaps sufficient to say that,
like everything he attempted, it is at least worth notice. It is a sort of
cross between Jules Verne and Bulwer Lytton's "Coming Race."

Professor Newcomb's mind was comprehensive in its activity. One might have
thought that an intellect occupied to the last in carrying out one of the
most stupendous tasks ever attempted by a mathematical astronomer would
have had little time or little energy left for other things; but Newcomb
took his rest and pleasure in popular articles and interviews. Only a
short time before his death he published an essay on aeronautics that
attracted wide attention, drawing the conclusions that the aeroplane can
never be of much use either as a passenger-carrier or in war, but that the