installed by his friend Dr. Lee. During the last year, one of the rich proprietors of Scotland, Lord Lindsay, founded a splendid observatory at Dun-Echt, for the study of Jupiter's satellites, which Mr. Airy had recommended as the best means for obtaining a knowledge of the mass of that planet. At the same time that he installed his instruments, Lord Lindsay organized at great expense—estimated at $80,000—an expedition to observe at Mauritius the transit of Venus, which took place on the 8th of December, 1874.
This division of labor into numerous specialties is very important for the progress of general science. "Then only," said Bacon, "men will begin to know their strength—when no more all will wish to do the same thing, but the one this, and the other that." The application of photography and spectroscopy to the study of celestial bodies by independent astronomers opens to physical astronomy an entirely new horizon, and promises to this branch a most rapid development. At the same time, it is clear that private establishments cannot be relied upon for the extended researches that demand the continuous labor of many generations of observers. The creation of a public observatory, assured of a permanent existence, and exclusively devoted to researches in physical astronomy, appeared then desirable and expedient. This chasm has just been filled by the foundation of the Oxford Observatory, for the construction of which the senate of that powerful university voted last year considerable funds, and to which Mr. Warren de La Rue presented all his instruments, and especially his famous reflector and his machine for working and polishing mirrors.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Astronomical Society have exerted a happy influence upon the development of the observatories as well as other English scientific institutions, by creating a tie between learned men led by the same aspirations, in provoking a generous emulation, and in stimulating private enterprise by great examples. By its monthly bulletin, the Monthly Notices, the Astronomical Society assures to the useful efforts of amateurs that publicity which is the most powerful incentive to a disinterested devotion.
The numerous and vast colonies that compose the British Empire have not remained, in this respect, behind the mother-country. British India possesses several observatories, of which the first was founded in 1819, at Madras, by the East India Company. In 1841, the King of Oude, still independent at that epoch, erected a rival establishment at Lucknow, and installed there the astronomer Wilcox, with three native assistants. Eight years after, Wilcox having died, the observatory was suppressed, the registers of observation were eaten by the white ants, and the instruments were destroyed during the war that ended by the annexation of Oude. The Rajah of Travancore founded, on the Malabar coast, the observatory of Trevandérem, which has furnished specially good meteorological and magnetic ob-
