of which
are furnished to the individual purchaser. When we consider the tide of
population annually flowing into the public domain, and the immense
importance of its efficient and economical administration, the utility
of this application of Astronomy will be duly estimated.

[Footnote A: Humboldt, _Histotre de la Geographie_, &c., Tom. 1,
page 71.]

I will here venture to repeat an anecdote, which I heard lately from a
son of the late Hon. Timothy Pickering. Mr. Octavius Pickering, on
behalf of his father, had applied to Mr. David Putnam of Marietta, to
act as his legal adviser, with respect to certain land claims in the
Virginia Military district, in the State of Ohio. Mr. Putnam declined
the agency. He had had much to do with business of that kind, and found
it beset with endless litigation. "I have never," he added, "succeeded
but in a single case, and that was a location and survey made by General
Washington before the Revolution; and I am not acquainted with any
surveys, except those made by him, but what have been litigated."

At this moment, a most important survey of the coast of the United
States is in progress, an operation of the utmost consequence, in
reference to the commerce, navigation, and hydrography of the country.
The entire work, I need scarce say, is one of practical astronomy. The
scientific establishment which we this day inaugurate is looked to for
important cooperation in this great undertaking, and will no doubt
contribute efficiently to its prosecution.

Astronomical observation furnishes by far the best means of defining the
boundaries of States, especially when the lines are of great length and
run through unsettled countries. Natural indications, like rivers and
mountains, however indistinct in appearance, are in practice subject to
unavoidable error. By the treaty of 1783, a boundary was established
between the United States and Great Britain, depending chiefly on the
course of rivers and highlands dividing the waters which flow into the
Atlantic Ocean from those which flow into the St. Lawrence. It took
twenty years to find out which river was the true St. Croix, that being
the starting point. England then having made the extraordinary discovery
that the Bay of Fundy is not a part of the Atlantic Ocean, forty years
more were passed in the unsuccessful attempt to re-create the highlands
which this strange theory had annihilated; and just as the two countries
were on the verge of a w