The earlier chapters of this collection are so much in the nature of an autobiography that the author has long shrunk from the idea of allowing them to see the light during his lifetime. His repugnance has been overcome by very warm expressions on the subject uttered by valued friends to whom they were shown, and by a desire that some at least who knew him in youth should be able to read what he has written.

The author trusts that neither critic nor reader will object because he has, in some cases, strayed outside the limits of his purely personal experience, in order to give a more complete view of a situation, or to bring out matters that might be of historic interest. If some of the chapters are scrappy, it is because he has tried to collect those experiences which have afforded him most food for thought, have been most influential in shaping his views, or are recalled with most pleasure.

In the summer of 1851, when I had passed the age of sixteen, we lived in a little school district a mile or two from the town of Yarmouth, N. S. Late in the summer we had a visit from a maternal uncle and aunt. As I had not seen Moncton since I was six years old, and as I wanted very much to visit my grandfather Prince once more, it was arranged that I should accompany them on their return home. An additional reason for this was that my mother's health had quite failed; there was no prospect of my doing anything where I was, and it was hoped that something might turn up at Moncton. There was but one difficulty; the visitors had driven to St. John in their own little carriage, which would hold only two people; so they could not take me back. I must therefore find my own way from St. John to Moncton.

We crossed the Bay of Fundy in a little sailing vessel. Among the passengers was an English ship captain who had just been wrecked off the coast of Newfoundland, and had the saved remnant of his crew with him. On the morning of our departure the weather was stormy, so that our vessel did not put to sea — a precaution for which the captain passenger expressed great contempt.

Perhaps an apology is due to the reader for my venturing to devote a chapter to my own efforts in the scientific line. If so, I scarcely know what apology to make, unless it is that one naturally feels interested in matters relating to his own work, and hopes to share that interest with his readers, and that it is easier for one to write such an account for himself than for any one else to do it for him.

Having determined to devote my life to the prosecution of exact astronomy, the first important problem which I took up, while at Cambridge, was that of the zone of minor planets, frequently called asteroids, revolving between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It was formerly supposed that these small bodies might be fragments of a large planet which had been shattered by a collision or explosion. If such were the case, the orbits would, for a time at least, all pass through the point at which the explosion occurred. When only three or four were known, it was supposed that they did pass nearly through the same point. When this was found not to be the case, the theory of an explosion was in no way weakened, because, owing to the gradual changes in the form and position of the orbits, produced by the attraction of the larger planets, these orbits would all move away from the point of intersection, and, in the course of thousands of years, be so mixed up that no connection could be seen between them.

If the “Great Star-Catalogue Case” is not surrounded with such mystery as would entitle it to a place among causes célèbres, it may well be so classed on account of the novelty of the questions at issue. It affords an instructive example of the possibility of cases in which strict justice cannot be done through the established forms of legal procedure. It is also of scientific interest because, although the question was a novel one to come before a court, it belongs to a class which every leader in scientific investigation must constantly encounter in meting out due credit to his assistants.

The plaintiff, Christian H. F. Peters, was a Dane by birth, and graduated at the University of Berlin in 1836. During the earlier years of his manhood he was engaged in the trigonometrical survey of the kingdom of Naples, where, for a time, he had charge of an observatory or some other astronomical station. It is said that, like many other able European youth of the period, he was implicated in the revolution of 1848, and had to flee the kingdom in consequence. Five years later, he came to the United States. Here his first patron was Dr. B. A. Gould, who procured for him first a position on the Coast Survey, and then one as his assistant at the Dudley Observatory in Albany.

I date my birth into the world of sweetness and light on one frosty morning in January, 1857, when I took my seat between two well-known mathematicians, before a blazing fire in the office of the “Nautical Almanac” at Cambridge, Mass. I had come on from Washington, armed with letters from Professor Henry and Mr. Hilgard, to seek a trial as an astronomical computer. The men beside me were Professor Joseph Winlock, the superintendent, and Mr. John D. Runkle, the senior assistant in the office. I talked of my unsuccessful attempt to master the “Mécanique Céleste” of Laplace without other preparation than that afforded by the most meagre text-books of elementary mathematics of that period. Runkle spoke of the translator as “the Captain.” So familiar a designation of the great Bowditch — LL. D. and member of the Royal Societies of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin — quite shocked me.

I was then in my twenty-second year, but it was the first time I had ever seen any one who was familiar with the “Mécanique Céleste.” I looked with awe upon the assistants who filed in and out as upon men who had all the mysteries of gravitation and the celestial motions at their fingers' ends. I should not have been surprised to learn that even the Hibernian who fed the fire had imbibed so much of the spirit of the place as to admire the genius of Laplace and Lagrange.

We went from Gibraltar to Berlin in January by way of Italy. The Mediterranean is a charming sea in summer, but in winter is a good deal like the Atlantic. The cause of the blueness of its water is not completely settled; but its sharing this color with Lake Geneva, which is tinged with detritus from the shore, might lead one to ascribe it to substances held in solution. The color is noticeable even in the harbor of Malta, to which we had a pleasant though not very smooth passage of five days.

Here was our first experience of an Italian town of a generation ago. I had no sooner started to take a walk than a so-called guide, who spoke what he thought was English, got on my track, and insisted on showing me everything. If I started toward a shop, he ran in before me, invited me in, asked what I would like to buy, and told the shopman to show the gentleman something. I could not get rid of him till I returned to the hotel, and then he had the audacity to want a fee for his services. I do not think he got it. Everything of interest was easily seen, and we only stopped to take the first Italian steamer to Messina.

In the wonderful development of astronomical research in our country during the past twenty years, no feature is more remarkable than the rise on an isolated mountain in California of an institution which, within that brief period, has become one of the foremost observatories of the world. As everything connected with the early history of such an institution must be of interest, it may not be amiss if I devote a few pages to it.

In 1874 the announcement reached the public eye that James Lick, an eccentric and wealthy Californian, had given his entire fortune to a board of trustees to be used for certain public purposes, one of which was the procuring of the greatest and most powerful telescope that had ever been made. There was nothing in the previous history of the donor that could explain his interest in a great telescope. I am sure he had never looked through a telescope in his life, and that if he had, and had been acquainted with the difficulties of an observation with it, it is quite likely the Lick Observatory would never have existed. From his point of view, as, indeed, from that of the public very generally, the question of telescopic vision is merely one of magnifying power.

It was long supposed that transits of Venus over the sun's disk afforded the only accurate method of determining the distance of the sun, one of the fundamental data of astronomy. Unfortunately, these phenomena are of the rarest. They come in pairs, with an interval of eight years between the transits of a pair. A pair occurred in 1761 and 1769, and again in 1874 and 1882. Now the whole of the twentieth century will pass without another recurrence of the phenomenon. Not until the years 2004 and 2012 will our posterity have the opportunity of witnessing it.

Much interesting history is associated with the adventures of the astronomers who took part in the expeditions to observe the transits of 1761 and 1769. In the almost chronic warfare which used to rage between France and England during that period, neither side was willing to regard as neutral even a scientific expedition sent out by the other. The French sent one of their astronomers, Le Gentil, to observe the transit at Pondicherry in the East Indies. As he was nearing his station, the presence of the enemy prevented him from making port, and he was still at sea on the day of the transit. When he at length landed, he determined to remain until the transit of 1769, and observe that.