-proof manuscript-room, and see how its volumes of observations have
been growing from the small beginnings of the days of Flamstead and
Halley, to those of our later and more, liberal times, will have good
reason to acknowledge that the money devoted to this establishment has
been well employed.

One other spot must be noticed as among the notable things in this
astronomical sanctum. It is the Chronometer-room, to which, during the
first three Mondays in the year, the chief watch-makers of London send
in their choicest instruments for examination and trial. The watches
remain for a good portion of a year; their rates being noted, day by
day, by two persons; and then the makers of the best receive prizes, and
their instruments are purchased for the navy. Other competitors obtain
certificates of excellence, which bring customers from the merchant
service; while others pass unrewarded. To enter the room where these
admirable instruments are kept, suggests the idea of going into a
Brobdingnag watch-factory. Round the place are ranged shelves, on which
the large watches are placed, all ticking in the most distinct and
formidable way one against another. When they first arrive, in January,
they are left to the ordinary atmospheric temperature for some months.
Their rates being taken under these circumstances, a large stove in the
center of the apartment is lighted, and heat got up to a sort of
artificial East India or Gold Coast point. Tried under these influences,
they are placed in an iron tray over the stove, like so many watch-pies
in a baker's dish, and the fire being encouraged, they are literally
kept baking, to see how their metal will stand that style of treatment.
While thus hot, their rates are once more taken; and then, after this
fiery ordeal, such of them as their owners like to trust to an opposite
test, are put into freezing mixtures! Yet, so beautifully made are these
triumphs of human ingenuity--so well is their mechanism 'corrected' for
compensating the expansion caused by the heat, and the contraction
induced by the cold--that an even rate of going is established, so
nearly, that its variation under opposite circumstances becomes a matter
of close and certain estimate.

The rates of chronometers on trial for purchase by the Board of
Admirality, at the Observatory, are posted up and printed in an official
form. Upon looking to the document for last year, we find a statement of
their performances during si