Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/551

Rh years, the signal was given by a time-ball, as at Greenwich, Glasgow, and elsewhere; this is a great ball suspended from an elevated standard, and made to fall at a precise moment by means of electrical mechanism. Unfortunately, the Edinburgh Observatory is a victim to the centralizing tendencies that rule now in England; its budget is very much reduced, and it is hardly permitted to vegetate. The Royal Observatory of Dublin, founded in 1774, and now under the direction of Mr. Brunnow, Astronomer Royal for Ireland, is not in much better condition. On the contrary, the observatory of the University of Glasgow, and the Ecclesiastical Observatory of Armagh, founded by the Irish primate, are well operated, and render real service.

The celebrated establishment of Kew, which depends at the same time upon the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and upon the Royal Society of London, is the central meteorological observatory of England; new apparatus and new methods are studied there; besides, astronomy, so called, increases its resources by the application of photography to the study of celestial phenomena. Mr. Warren de La Rue has here inaugurated his process of solar observation by the aid of photoheliography, the first decisive step in the eminently fruitful path, the earliest idea of which is due to two French scientists, MM. Fizeau and Léon Foucault.

Mr. Warren de La Rue, who very recently presided over the Astronomical Society of London, is the largest paper-manufacturer in England, and a noteworthy improvement in photographic paper is due to him. He had since 1852 a small observatory at his house in Canonbury, at London, where he undertook his first essays in celestial photography. Five years later, he transported it to the village of Cranford, at the west of London, and since then he has divided his leisure time between this residence, where he studied the moon, and Kew, where solar investigations were carried on under his direction. At the same time, he has given his attention to the improvement of optical instruments. He made himself the mirror of a telescope that he used in most of his observations. But these labors injured his eyesight, and, despairing of being able any longer to make observations himself, he has presented his magnificent collection of instruments to the University of Oxford.

Rich merchants and opulent manufacturers have done themselves honor in founding a series of small observatories, that by their useful labors have assisted the progress of science. That of Mr. Bishop, for instance, erected at first near Regent's Park, then transported to Twickenham, where Messrs. Hind and Pogson discovered so many asteroids; that of Mr. Barclay, the brewer, at Leyton, near London; that of Mr. Lassell, near Liverpool. Like the elder Herschel and Lord Rosse, Mr. Lassell made with his own hands the mirrors of his telescopes, by whose aid he discovered the satellites of Neptune, Saturn,