(The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, long before this had won his fame by mapping the stars of the Northern Heavens.) No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won another scholarship to Oxford University. While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits and argued the Sun’s axial rotation. On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends. The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena. After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required. Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666, at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal. Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars. In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of longitudes. On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for the calculation of the Sun’s distance.