site selected for the
observatory is seventy-five miles from the city, on the northern shore
of Lake Geneva. There is a high ground here, rising sufficiently into
a clear atmosphere, nearly two hundred feet above the level of the
lake.

The observatory and the great telescope which constitutes its central
fact are to bear the name of the donor, Mr. Yerkes, of Chicago, who
has contributed the means for rearing this magnificent adjunct of the
University. The enterprise contemplated from the first the
construction of the most powerful telescope ever known. The
manufacture of the objective, upon which everything depends, was
assigned to Mr. Alvan G. Clark, of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, who
is the only living representative of the old firm of Alvan Clark &
Sons.

Alvan G. Clark has inherited much of the genius of his father, though
it is said that in making the lens of the Lick Observatory the father
had to be called from his retirement to superintend personally some of
the more delicate parts of the finishing before which task his sons
had quailed. But the younger Clark readily agreed to make the Geneva
lens, under the order of Yerkes, and to produce a perfect objective
_forty inches in diameter_! This important work, so critical--almost
impossible--has been successfully accomplished.

The making and the mounting of the Yerkes telescope have been assigned
to Warner & Swasey, of Cleveland, Ohio, who are recognized as the best
telescope builders in America. The great observatory is approaching
completion. The instrument itself has been finished, examined,
accepted by a committee of experts, and declared to fulfill all of the
conditions of the agreement between the founder and the makers. Thus,
just north of the boundary line between Illinois and Wisconsin, the
greatest telescope of the world has been lifted to its dome and
pointed to the heavens.

The formal opening of the observatory is promised for the summer
months of 1896. The human mind by this agency has made another stride
into the depths of infinite space. Another universe is presently to be
penetrated and revealed. A hollow sphere of space outside of the
sphere already known is to be added to the already unthinkable
universe which we inhabit. Every part of the immense observatory and
of the telescope is of American production, with the single important
exception of the cast glass disc from which the two principal lenses,
the one double convex and the other p