Page:A discovery that the moon has a vast population of human beings.djvu/21

 and infinitely transcend the powers of the highest magnifiers in reflecting telescopes.

So sanguinely indeed did he calculate upon the advantages of this splendid alliance, that he expressed confidence in his ultimate ability to study even the entomology of the moon, in case she contained insects upon her surface. Having witnessed the completion of this great lens, and its safe transportation to the metropolis, his next care was the construction of a suitable microscope, and of the mechanical frame-work for the horizontal and vertical action of the whole. His plans in every branch of his undertaking having been intensely studied, even to their minutest details, were easily and rapidly executed. He awaited only the appointed period at which he was to convey his magnificent apparatus to its destination.

A correspondence had for some time passed between the Boards of England, France, and Anstria, with a view to improvements in the tables of longitudo in the southern hemisphere; which are found to be much less accurate than those of the northern. The high opinion entertained by the British Board of Longitude of the principles of the new telescope, and of the profound skill of its inventor, determined the government to solicit his services in observing the transit of Mercury over the sun's disk, which will take place on the 7th of November in the present year: and which, as it will occur at 7h. 47m. 558. night, conjunction, meantime, and at 8h. 12m. 22s. middle, true time, will be invisible to nearly all the northern hemisphere. The place at which the transits of Mercury and of Venus have generally been observed by the astronomers of Europe, when occurring under these circumstances, is the Cape of Good Hope; and no transit of Venus having occurred since the year 1769, and none being to occur before 1874, the accurate observation of the transits of Mercury, which occur more frequently, has been found of great importance both to astronomy and navigation. To the latter useful art, indeed, the transits of Mercury are nearly as important as those of Venus; for although those of the latter planet have the peculiar advantage of determining exactly the great solar parallax, and thence the distances of all the planets from the sun, yet the