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was a rather eccentric millionaire in San Francisco, who would probably have spent his money in a very different way but for the persuasiveness of an astronomer, Mr. George Davidson. There are many stories about James Lick: perhaps you would like to hear one of them. A great many people applied to him for work, and he had a curious way of deciding whether to give them employment or not. He attached great importance to their obeying orders, however stupid the orders might seem. So when a man came asking for work, he would set him to plant trees upside down, with their roots in the air and their branches in the ground! Those who set to work without protest he kept in his service; but if a man objected or asked questions, he was sent away. You can well imagine that a man like this had queer ideas about what to do with his money, and he was chiefly anxious to have some great memorial to himself. Mr. Davidson persuaded him that a large telescope would be a very good form of memorial; and the bones of James Lick now rest under the great 36-inch telescope on the top of Mount Hamilton. He died, indeed, before it was completed, and was temporarily buried elsewhere: but when the great telescope was at last in place, his bones were dug up and deposited under his chosen memorial. Only one possibility seems to threaten their peaceful rest: California is rather a region for earthquakes, and already the Observatory has been twice seriously shaken. San Francisco was, as you know, wrecked by an earthquake some few years ago. The Lick Observatory is some distance away from