on and management of the chemicals
that it is hardly to be expected that an amateur will take the trouble
to keep his telescope in order, unless he has a taste for chemistry as
well as for astronomy.

The curiosity to see the heavenly bodies through great telescopes is so
wide-spread that we are apt to forget how much can be seen and done
with small ones. The fact is that a large proportion of the
astronomical observations of past times have been made with what we
should now regard as very small instruments, and a good deal of the
solid astronomical work of the present time is done with meridian
circles the apertures of which ordinarily range from four to eight
inches. One of the most conspicuous examples in recent times of how a
moderate-sized instrument may be utilized is afforded by the
discoveries of double stars made by Mr. S. W. Burnham, of Chicago.
Provided with a little six-inch telescope, procured at his own expense
from the Messrs. Clark, he has discovered many hundred double stars so
difficult that they had escaped the scrutiny of Maedler and the
Struves, and gained for himself one of the highest positions among the
astronomers of the day engaged in the observation of these objects. It
was with this little instrument that on Mount Hamilton,
California--afterward the site of the great Lick Observatory--he
discovered forty-eight new double stars, which had remained unnoticed
by all previous observers. First among the objects which show
beautifully through moderate instruments stands the moon. People who
want to see the moon at an observatory generally make the mistake of
looking when the moon is full, and asking to see it through the largest
telescope. Nothing can then be made out but a brilliant blaze of light,
mottled with dark spots, and crossed by irregular bright lines. The
best time to view the moon is near or before the first quarter, or when
she is from three to eight days old. The last quarter is of course
equally favorable, so far as seeing is concerned, only one must be up
after midnight to see her in that position. Seen through a three or
four inch telescope, a day or two before the first quarter, about half
an hour after sunset, and with a magnifying power between fifty and one
hundred, the moon is one of the most beautiful objects in the heavens.
Twilight softens her radiance so that the eye is not dazzled as it will
be when the sky is entirely dark. The general aspect she then presents
is that o