SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.

You will observe that I am careful to say the progress of science "at
home and abroad;" for the study of Astronomy in this country has long
since, I am happy to add, passed that point where it is content to
repeat the observations and verify the results of European research. It
has boldly and successfully entered the field of original investigation,
discovery, and speculation; and there is not now a single department of
the science in which the names of American observers and mathematicians
are not cited by our brethren across the water, side by side with the
most eminent of their European contemporaries.

This state of things is certainly recent. During the colonial period
and in the first generation after the Revolution, no department of
science was, for obvious causes, very extensively cultivated in
America--astronomy perhaps as much as the kindred branches. The
improvement in the quadrant, commonly known as Hadley's, had already
been made at Philadelphia by Godfrey, in the early part of the last
century; and the beautiful invention of the collimating telescope was
made at a later period by Rittenhouse, an astronomer of distinguished
repute. The transits of Venus of 1761 and 1769 were observed, and
orreries were constructed in different parts of the country; and some
respectable scientific essays are contained and valuable observations
are recorded in the early volumes of the Transactions of the
Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia, and the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences at Boston and Cambridge. But in the absence of a numerous
class of men of science to encourage and aid each other, without
observatories and without valuable instruments, little of importance
could be expected in the higher walks of astronomical life.