ent of
the science in which the names of American observers and mathematicians
are not cited by our brethren across the water, side by side with the
most eminent of their European contemporaries.

This state of things is certainly recent. During the colonial period and
in the first generation after the Revolution, no department of science
was, for obvious causes, very extensively cultivated in
America--astronomy perhaps as much as the kindred branches. The
improvement in the quadrant, commonly known as Hadley's, had already
been made at Philadelphia by Godfrey, in the early part of the last
century; and the beautiful invention of the collimating telescope was
made at a later period by Rittenhouse, an astronomer of distinguished
repute. The transits of Venus of 1761 and 1769 were observed, and
orreries were constructed in different parts of the country; and some
respectable scientific essays are contained and valuable observations
are recorded in the early volumes of the Transactions of the
Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia, and the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences at Boston and Cambridge. But in the absence of a numerous
class of men of science to encourage and aid each other, without
observatories and without valuable instruments, little of importance
could be expected in the higher walks of astronomical life.

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 _Mecanique 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