Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/834

Rh individual talents, astronomy, the highest branch of human knowledge, should have remained till now deprived of that powerful assistance, and have depended for its advancement only on the isolated and independent labors of individuals. Some persons may believe that astronomy has less need of this kind of assistance than other sciences, and that in the perfection which its physical theory has reached its future progress may be safely confided to the zeal of individuals and to great national establishments devoted exclusively to celestial observations, or, at all events, to those public institutions and academies which are found in all civilized nations, the object of which is the general cultivation of physical and mathematical science. For this reason it will be necessary to make known the useful objects that may be accomplished and the obstacles that may be avoided by a society devoted solely to the encouragement and advancement of astronomy."

The society organized a minute and systematic examination of the sky, dividing it into zones of moderate extent among members who had leisure and would be disposed to give particular and constant attention to those parts, in order to determine the positions and, if possible, the proper motions of all the objects, large and small, which might present themselves within their respective limits, and keep them constantly under review in such a way that not one new celestial body of cometary or planetary nature, passing their regions, should be able to escape them. The object which the new society proposed to itself was to a large extent obtained, and the progress which has been realized in astronomy during this century is intimately connected with its history. The desiderata which it indicated and to which it directed attention have been supplied; and while it has not taken a direct part in all the labors that have been performed, it has rendered a great service in making them known and in promulgating discoveries. There are now in England thirty-four public and private observatories. Most of these establishments have been created since 1820, under the beneficent influence of the Astronomical Society; and this is not one of the least services that it has rendered. In forming a center accessible to professional astronomers and amateurs alike, to higher minds and more modest ones, the Astronomical Society of London was the first in developing the taste for the science to the degree to which it has grown at the present day.

The example set by the Astronomical Society of London was followed by Germany. In 1863 there was formed at Leipsic the