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Page 1 : Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State University Libraries. See http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=AAN1277.0001.001 THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. AN ORATION Delivered at Albany, on the 28th of July, 1856 BY EDWARD EVERETT, ON THE OCCASION OF THE INAUGURATION OF THE DUDLEY ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY, WITH A CONDENSED REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS, AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE DEDICATION OF NEW YORK STATE GEOLOGICAL HALL. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY ROSS & TOUSEY, 103 NASSAU STREET.

Page 5 : Prof. H. said of this particular occasion:-- We may be quite sure that this Hall will be a center of deep interest to coming generations. Long after we shall have passed away will the men of New-York, as they survey these monuments, feel stimulated to engage in other noble enterprises by this work of their progenitors, and from many a distant part of the civilized world will men come here to solve their scientific questions, and to bring far-off regions into comparison with this. New-York, then, by her liberal patronage, has not only acquired an honorable name among those living in all civilized lands, but has secured the voice of History to transmit her fame to far-off generations. SIR WILLIAM LOGAN ASKS "THE WAY TO ALBANY." Sir WILLIAM E. LOGAN, of Canada, in a brief speech acknowledged the services rendered by the New-York Survey to Canada.

Page 9 : The piers for the Meridian Circle and Transit have, after careful investigation, been procured from the Lockport quarries. The great density and uniformity of the structure of the stone, and the facility with which such large masses as are required for this purpose can be procured there, have induced the selection of these quarries. The stones will weigh from six and a half to eight tons each. The main building was erected from the drawings of Messrs. Woollett and Ogden, Architects, Albany; the additions and the machinery have been designed by Mr. W. Hodgins, Civil Engineer; and the latter is now being constructed under his superintendence, in a very superior manner, at the iron works of Messrs. Pruyn and Lansing, Albany. The entire building is a tasteful and elegant structure, much superior in architectural character to any other in America devoted to a similar purpose. ORATION.

Page 13 : How far our astronomers may be able to pursue their researches, will depend upon the resources of our public institutions, and the liberality of wealthy individuals in furnishing the requisite means. With the exception of the observatories at Washington and West Point, little can be done, or be expected to be done, by the government of the Union or the States; but in this, as in every other department of liberal art and science, the great dependence,--and may I not add, the safe dependence?--as it ever has been, must continue to be upon the bounty of enlightened, liberal, and public-spirited individuals. THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY. It is by a signal exercise of this bounty, my Friends, that we are called together to-day.

Page 17 : Among these I may mention the land system of the United States, and the determination of the boundaries of the country. I believe that till it was done by the Federal Government, a uniform system of mathematical survey had never in any country been applied to an extensive territory. Large grants and sales of public land took place before the Revolution, and in the interval between the peace and the adoption of the Constitution; but the limits of these grants and sales were ascertained by sensible objects, by trees, streams, rocks, hills, and by reference to adjacent portions of territory, previously surveyed. The uncertainty of boundaries thus defined, was a never-failing source of litigation. Large tracts of land in the Western country, granted by Virginia under this old system of special and local survey, were covered with conflicting claims; and the controversies to which they gave rise formed no small part of the business of the Federal Court after its organization.

Page 21 : In pursuing this course, however, a difficulty presented itself, which for ages proved insuperable--and which to the same extent has existed in no other science, viz.: that all the leading phenomena are in their appearance delusive. It is indeed true that in all sciences superficial observation can only lead, except by chance, to superficial knowledge; but I know of no branch in which, to the same degree as in astronomy, the great leading phenomena are the reverse of true; while they yet appeal so strongly to the senses, that men who could foretell eclipses, and who discovered the precession of the equinoxes, still believed that the earth was at rest in the center of the universe, and that all the host of heaven performed a daily revolution about it as a center. It usually happens in scientific progress, that when a great fact is at length discovered, it approves itself at once to all competent judges.

Page 25 : [Footnote A: Archias, i.; De Oratore, iii., 21.] The history of electricity, galvanism, and magnetism, furnishes the most striking illustration of this remark. Commencing with the meteorological phenomena of our own atmosphere, and terminating with the observation of the remotest heavens, it may well be adduced, on an occasion like the present. Franklin demonstrated the identity of lightning and the electric fluid. This discovery gave a great impulse to electrical research, with little else in view but the means of protection from the thunder-cloud. A purely accidental circumstance led the physician Galvani, at Bologna, to trace the mysterious element, under conditions entirely novel, both of development and application. In this new form it became, in the hands of Davy, the instrument of the most extraordinary chemical operations; and earths and alkalis, touched by the creative wire, started up into metals that float on water, and kindle in the air.

Page 29 : "Præclare ergo Aristoteles, 'Si essent,' inquit, 'qui sub terra semper habitavissent, bonis et illustribus domiciliis quæ essent ornata signis atque picturis, instructaque rebus iis omnibus quibus abundant ii qui beati putantur, nec tamen exissent unquam supra terram; accepissent autem fama et auditione, esse quoddam numen et vim Deorum,--deinde aliquo tempore patefactis terræ faucibus ex illis abditis sedibus evadere in hæc loca quæ nos incolimus, atque exire potuissent; cum repente terram et maria coelumque, vidissent; nubium magnitudinem ventorumque vim, cognovissent; aspexissentque solem, ejusque tum magnitudinem, pulchritudinemque; tum etiam efficientiam cognovissent, quod is diem efficeret, toto coelo luce diffusa; cum autem terras nox opacasset, tum coelum totum cernerent astris distinctum et ornatum, lunæque luminum varietatem tum crescentis tum senescentis, corumque omnium ortus et occasus atque in æternitate ratos immutabilesque cursus;--hæc cum viderent, profecto et esse De