Now difficulties incident to the divided responsibility of the commission were met with. During the interim between the death of Admiral Davis, in February, 1877, and the coming of Admiral John Rodgers as his successor, a legal question arose as to the power of the commission over its members. The work had to stop until it was settled, and I had to discharge my computers a second time. After it was again started I discovered that I did not have complete control of the funds appropriated for reducing the observations. The result was that the computers had to be discharged and the work stopped for the third time. This occurred not long before I started out to observe the transit in 1882. For me the third hair was the one that broke the camel's back. I turned the papers and work over to Professor Harkness, by whom the subject was continued until he was made astronomical director of the Naval Observatory in 1894.
I do not know that the commission was ever formally dissolved. Practically, however, its functions may be said to have terminated in the year 1886, when a provision of law was enacted by which all its property was turned over to the Secretary of the Navy.
What the present condition of the work may be, and how much of it is ready for the press, I cannot say. My impression is that it is in that condition known in household language as "all done but finishing." Whether it will ever appear is a question for the future. All the men who took part in it or who understood its details are either dead or on the retired list, and it is difficult for one not familiar with it from the beginning to carry it to completion.
[1] For the incidents connected with the English observations of this transit, the author is indebted to Vice-Admiral W. H. Smyth's curious and rare book, Speculum Hartwellianum, London, 1860. It and other works of the same author may be described as queer and interesting jumbles of astronomical and other information, thrown into an interesting form; and, in the case of the present work, spread through a finely illustrated quarto volume of nearly five hundred pages.
[2] "The War Department got ahead of us in the matter of furniture," said an officer of the Navy Department to me long afterwards, when the furniture for the new department building was being obtained. "They knew enough to ask for a third more than they wanted; we reduced our estimate to the lowest point. Both estimates were reduced one third by the Appropriations Committee. The result is that they have all the furniture they want, while we are greatly pinched."
[3] As this result would not be possible under our present system, which was introduced by the first Cleveland administration, I might remark that it resulted from a practice on the part of the Treasury of lumping appropriations on its books in order to simplify the keeping of the accounts.
VII
THE LICK OBSERVATORY
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. By making an instrument large and powerful enough we may hope even to discover rational beings on other planets.