hat, when the time of that transit arrives, the phenomenon
will be observed from the same station, and the pillars be found in
such a condition that they can again be used.

All the governments, except our own, which observed the two transits
of Venus on a large scale long ago completed the work of reduction,
and published the observations in full. On our own part we have
published a preliminary discussion of some observations of the transit
of 1874. Of that of 1882 nothing has, I believe, been published
except some brief statements of results of the photographs, which
appeared in an annual report of the Naval Observatory. Having need in
my tables of the planets of the best value of the solar parallax that
could be obtained by every method, I worked up all the observations
of contacts made by the parties of every country, but, of course,
did not publish our own observations. Up to the present time,
twenty-eight years after the first of the transits, and twenty
years after the second, our observations have never been officially
published except to the extent I have stated. The importance of
the matter may be judged by the fact that the government expended
$375,000 on these observations, not counting the salaries of its
officers engaged in the work, or the cost of sailing a naval ship.
As I was a member of the commission charged with the work, and must
therefore bear my full share of the responsibility for this failure,
I think it proper to state briefly how it happened, hoping thereby
to enforce the urgent need of a better organization of some of our
scientific work.

The work of reducing such observations, editing and preparing them for
the press, involved much computation to be done by assistants, and I,
being secretary of the commission, was charged with the execution
of this part of the work. The appropriations made by Congress for
the observations were considered available for the reduction also.
There was a small balance left over, and I estimated that $3000 more
would suffice to complete the work. This was obtained from Congress
in the winter of 1875.

About the end of 1876 I was surprised to receive from the Treasury
Department a notification that the appropriation for the transit
of Venus was almost exhausted, when according to my accounts, more
than $3000 still remained. On inquiry it was found that the sum
appropriated about two years before had never been placed to the
credit of the transit of Ven