AMERICAN OBSERVATIONS.

The greater the credit due for the achievement of an enterprise
commenced in the early part of the present century, and which would
reflect honor on the science of any country and any age; I mean the
translation and commentary on Laplace's _Mécanique Celeste_, by
Bowditch; a work of whose merit I am myself wholly unable to form
an opinion, but which I suppose places the learned translator and
commentator on a level with the ablest astronomers and geometers of the
day. This work may be considered as opening a new era in 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 dépôt 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,