the College and
had carried on his scientific labours within its precincts, was offered
and accepted the post of its director. Placed in 1847 in possession of
one of the finest instruments in the world--a masterpiece of Merz and
Mahler--he headed the now long list of distinguished Transatlantic
observers. Like the elder Struve, he left an heir to his office and to
his eminence, but George Bond unfortunately died in 1865, at the early
age of thirty-nine, having survived his father but six years.

On the night of November 15, 1850--the air, remarkably enough, being so
hazy that only the brightest stars could be perceived with the naked
eye--William Bond discerned a dusky ring, extending about halfway
between the inner brighter one and the globe of Saturn. A fortnight
later, but before the observation had been announced in England, the
same appearance was seen by the Rev. W. R. Dawes with the comparatively
small refractor of his observatory at Wateringbury, and on December 3
was described by Mr. Lassell (then on a visit to him) as "something like
a crape veil covering a part of the sky within the inner ring."[229]
Next morning the _Times_ containing the report of Bond's discovery
reached Wateringbury. The most surprising circumstance in the matter was
that the novel appendage had remained so long unrecognised. As the rings
opened out to their full extent, it became obvious with very moderate
optical assistance; yet some of the most acute observers who have ever
lived, using instruments of vast power, had heretofore failed to detect
its presence. It soon appeared, however, that Galle of Berlin[230] had
noticed, June 10, 1838, a veil-like extension of the lucid ring across
half the dark space separating it from the planet; but the observation,
although communicated at the time to the Berlin Academy of Sciences, had
remained barren. Traces of the dark ring, moreover, were found in
drawings executed by Campani in 1664[231] and by Hooke in 1666;[232]
while Picard (June 15, 1673),[233] Hadley (spring of 1720),[234] and
Herschel,[235] had all undoubtedly seen it under the aspect of a dark
bar or belt crossing the Saturnian globe. It was, then, of no recent
origin; but there seemed reason to think that it had lately gained
considerably in brightness. The full meaning of this suspected change it
was reserved for later investigations to develop.

What we may, in a certain sense, call the closing result of the race for
discovery, in