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 of an asteroid and ten or twelve telescopic comets; in
the resolution of nebulæ which had defied every thing in Europe but
Lord Rosse's great reflector; in the application of electricity to the