Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/287

SAN JOSE TO SAN BUENAVENTURA 241 recluse, has conferred many telling benefactions upon his adopted State. He willed that this great telescope should be fitted with the most powerful refracting lens in the world, and that it should be free to all. It was his wish, also, that his body be entombed in its foundations. Within a few years the Yerkes Observatory on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, has been built to receive a telescope the diameter of whose lens is forty inches, or four inches larger than that of Lick Observatory. At Meudon, near Paris, there is a 32-inch refracting lens; the next largest is at Potsdam near Berlin (31 inches). The Observatories at Riverview Park, Pennsylvania, at Nice, France, and Pul- kowa, Russia, each have 30-inch telescopes. The telescopes at Greenwich, England, at Washington, at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and at Harvard (24 inches) complete the list of the world's most important refracting instruments. Eleven to fifteen inches is the average for other well-known telescopes. The Lick equipment also includes a 33-inch photo lens, several photo-telescopes and a spectograph. Among the noted feats credited to the Mt. Hamil- ton staff are the discoveries of the fifth, sixth and seventh satellites of Jupiter. A colony of about sixty, comprising astronomers, assistants, instru- ment adjusters and their families live near the Observatory.