The popularity of amateur astronomy in England certainly needs explanation, for it is a pursuit attended by many disappointments in so capricious a climate, and Englishmen have few opportunities of seeing a really impressive display of stars. Perhaps the Englishman is sufficient of a Northerner to be profoundly attracted by the sheer vastness and the mystery of stellar phenomena. Then the actual telescope and its accessories probably appeal to the English love of mechanism. There are few instruments more delightful in themselves than a properly mounted telescope of moderate aperture. Its adjustment affords a pleasure as refined as that given by operating a small hand printing-press, and superior to that of mending a bicycle. Every telescope has its distinctive “performance,” and one can grow as enthusiastically partisan about makes of telescopes as one can about makes of motor-cars or pianos. Whether or not these be the reasons it is certain that astronomy is the science which most attracts the English amateur. The existence of the British Astronomical Association, an amateur society with some hundreds of members, is sufficient proof of this. It would perhaps be difficult to justify by the results the amount of time and money spent in amateur stargazing, if one estimated results from the severe standpoint of the professional astronomer. But if one adopts a broader outlook and estimates the results in rather more human terms, then there is probably no pursuit which affords more innocent pleasure and provides, in itself, a more liberal education. It is said that the vast photographic telescopes of the present day have rendered the small instrument valueless. Even Mr. Hinks, in his excellent volume _Astronomy_ in the Home University Library, says that the would-be amateur would do well to hesitate before buying a small telescope, and that a measuring machine, to measure photographs taken by big instruments, would be a far better investment. This is the severely professional point of view; it is to mistake the psychology of the amateur observer. The amateur likes to think that he might some day make a discovery, but that is only by the way. His real joy is in doing precisely what the professional cannot do, and that is to enjoy the _spectacle_ of the heavens. The ordinary run of work in a big observatory is not much more exciting than work in an ordinary business office. To sit up half the night measuring photographs would conceivably add to scientific knowledge, and there are doubtless stern men who are willing to do it. These, like computers, are the martyrs of science. The average amateur will continue to prefer his present pleasant, if ineffectual, method of adding to scientific knowledge. It is to be feared that, as one result of the war, this amiable occupation will decline. A little before the war the amateur could purchase a modest but thoroughly good, instrument at a reasonable price. The same