neither of these bills became law, it is well to remember how
strenuously the application of the Smithson fund to this pur-
pose was urged at the time when the Institution was taking
the shape it now bears.

At the time that President Adams submitted these bills
astronomy had departed little from the beaten track in which
it had moved for centuries, and in which its main object had
been to fix with precision the places of the heavenly bodies,
without determining their nature. As the writer has else-
where said:

"The prime object of astronomy until lately has been to
say where any heavenly body is, rather than what it is, but
within the present generation a new branch of astronomy has
arisen, which studies the heavenly bodies for what they are
in themselves and in relation to ourselves. Its study of the
sun, for instance, beginning with its external features, led to
the inquiry as to what it was made of, and then to the finding
of the unexpected relations which it bore to the earth and to
our daily lives on it, the conclusion being that in a physical
sense it made us and recreates us, as it were, daily, and that
the knowledge of the intimate ties which unite man with it
brings results of a practical and important kind which a gen-
eration ago were hardly guessed at."

As the aims of this new astronomy are different from the
old, so are its methods, in which it bears but an imperfect
resemblance to those of the older or classic astronomy; and
this diversity of method influences even the external struc-
ture. In place of an imposing edifice, crowned by a dome
which shelters a great telescope, we are more likely to find
a modest installation in which the telescope, though present,
is not necessarily the important feature; in which there are
no great meridian instruments, but instead a room shel-
tering spectroscopes, photographic objectives, and the like;

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