hat on this side things fell into the
condition I have described, and stayed there until Maury resigned his
commission and cast his fortunes with the Confederacy. Then Gilliss
took charge and had to see what could be done under the circumstances.

It soon became evident to him that no system of work of the first
order of importance could be initiated until the instrumental
equipment was greatly improved. The clocks, perfection in
which is almost at the bottom of good work, were quite unfit
for use. The astronomical clock with which Yarnall and I made
our observations kept worse time than a high-class pocket watch
does to-day. The instruments were antiquated and defective in
several particulars. Before real work could be commenced new ones
must be procured. But the civil war was in progress, and the times
were not favorable to immediately securing them. That the work of
the observatory was kept up was due to a feeling of pride on the
part of our authorities in continuing it without interruption through
the conflict. The personnel was as insufficient as the instruments.
On it devolved not only the making of the astronomical observations,
but the issue of charts and chronometers to the temporarily immense
navy. In fact the observatory was still a depot of charts for the
naval service, and continued to be such until the Hydrographic Office
was established in 1866.

In 1863 Gilliss obtained authority to have the most pressing wants
supplied by the construction of a great transit circle by Pistor and
Martins in Berlin. He had a comprehensive plan of work with this
instrument when it should arrive, but deferred putting any such plan
in operation until its actual reception.

Somehow the work of editing, explaining, and preparing for the
press the new series of observations made by Yarnall and myself with
our old transit instrument devolved on me. To do this in the most
satisfactory way, it was necessary to make a careful study of the
methods and system at the leading observatories of other countries
in the line we were pursuing, especially Greenwich. Here I was
struck by the superiority of their system to ours. Everything was
there done on an exact and uniform plan, and one which seemed to
me better adapted to get the best results than ours was. For the
non-astronomical reader it may be remarked that after an astronomer
has made and recorded his observations, a large amount of calculation
is necessary to obtai