has been defrayed by Mrs. Blandina Dudley; to whose generosity, and that
of several other public-spirited individuals, the institution is also
indebted for the provision which has been made for an adequate supply of
first-class instruments, to be executed by the most eminent makers in
Europe and America; and which, it is confidently expected, will yield to
none of their class in any observatory in the world.[A]

[Footnote A: Prof. Loomis, in _Harper's Magazine_ for June, p. 49.]

With a liberal supply of instrumental power; established in a community
to whose intelligence and generosity its support may be safely confided,
and whose educational institutions are rapidly realizing the conception
of a university; countenanced by the gentleman who conducts the United
States Coast Survey with such scientific skill and administrative
energy; committed to the immediate supervision of an astronomer to
whose distinguished talent had been added the advantage of a thorough
scientific education in the most renowned universities of Europe, and
who, as the editor of the _American Astronomical Journal_, has shown
himself to be fully qualified for the high trust;--under these favorable
circumstances, the Dudley Observatory at Albany takes its place among
the scientific foundations of the country and the world.


WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY.

It is no affected modesty which leads me to express the regret that this
interesting occasion could not have taken place under somewhat different
auspices. I feel that the duty of addressing this great and enlightened
assembly, comprising so much of the intelligence of the community and of
the science of the country, ought to have been elsewhere assigned; that