d their architecture to their needs.

"This beautiful building was erected by an association of gentlemen, who
raised a good deal of money, but, of course, not enough. They built the
Grecian temple, but they could not supply it with priests.

"About a hundred years ago Colin Maclaurin had laid the foundation of an
observatory, and the curious Gothic building, which still stands, is the
first germ. We laugh now at the narrow ideas of those days, which seemed
to consider an observatory a lookout only; but the first step in a work
is a great step--the others are easily taken. There was added to the
building of Maclaurin a very small transit room, and then the present
edifice followed.

"When the builders of the observatory found that they could not support
it, they presented it to the British government; so that it is now a
government child, but it is not petted, like the first-born of
Greenwich.

"There are three instruments; an excellent transit instrument of six and
a half inches' aperture, resting on its y's of solid granite. The
corrections of the errors of the instrument by means of little screws
are given up, and the errors which are known to exist are corrected in
the computations.

"Professor Smyth finds that although the two pillars upon which the
instrument rests were cut from the same quarry, they are unequally
affected by changes of temperature; so that the variation of the azimuth
error, though slight, is irregular.

"The collimation plate they correct with the micrometer, so that they
consider some position-reading of the micrometer-head the zero point,
and correct that for the error, which they determine by reflection in a
trough of mercury. With this instrument they observe on certain stars of
the British Catalogue, whose places are not very well determined, and
with a mural circle of smaller power they determine declinations.

"The observatory possesses an equatorial telescope, but it is of mixed
composition. The object glass was given by Dr. Lee, the eye-pieces by
some one else, and the two are put together in a case, and used by
Professor Smyth for looking at the craters in the moon; of these he has
made fine drawings, and has published them in color prints.

"The whole staff of the observatory consists of Professor Smyth, Mr.
Wallace, an old man, and Mr. Williamson, a young man.

"The city of Edinboro' has no amateur astronomers, and there are two
only, of note, in Scotland: Sir William Bisba