ield of astronomy, winning world-wide
recognition for his country in the science, and receiving the salary
of a department clerk. I never wrestled harder with a superior
than I did with Hon. R. W. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy, about
1880, to induce him to raise Mr. Hill's salary from $1200 to $1400.
It goes without saying that Hill took even less interest in the
matter than I did. He did not work for pay, but for the love of
science. His little farm at Nyack Turnpike sufficed for his home,
and supplied his necessities so long as he lived there, and all
he asked in Washington was the means of going on with his work.
The deplorable feature of the situation is, that this devotion to
his science, instead of commanding due recognition on the public
and official side, rather tended to create an inadequate impression
of the importance of what he was doing. That I could not secure
for him at least the highest official consideration is among the
regretful memories of my official life.

Although, so far as the amount of labor is concerned, Mr. Hill's
work upon Jupiter and Saturn is the most massive he ever undertook,
his really great scientific merit consists in the development of a
radically new method of computing the inequalities of the moon's
motion, which is now being developed and applied by Professor
E. W. Brown. His most marked intellectual characteristic is the
eminently practical character of his researches. He does not aim
so much at elegant mathematical formulae, as to determine with the
greatest precision the actual quantities of which mathematical
astronomy stands in need. In this direction he has left every
investigator of recent or present time far in the rear.

After the computations on Jupiter and Saturn were made, it was
necessary to correct their orbits and make tables of their motions.
This work I left entirely in Mr. Hill's hands, the only requirement
being that the masses of the planets and other data which he
adopted should be uniform with those I used in the rest of the
work. His tables were practically completed in manuscript at the
beginning of 1892. When they were through, doubtless feeling, as
well he might, that he had done his whole duty to science and the
government, Mr. Hill resigned his office and returned to his home.
During the summer he paid a visit to Europe, and visiting the
Cambridge University, was honored with the degree of Doctor of Laws,
along with a distinguished company