Professor Perrine discovered a new comet in February, 1896, which for some time travelled towards the earth at the rate of 1,600,000 miles per day. Professor David P. Todd of Amherst College was enabled to make at the Lick Observatory the finest photographs ever made of the transit of Venus, Dec. 6, 1882. As there will not be another transit of Venus till Jan. 8, 2004, so that no living astronomer will ever behold another, this transit was of special importance. The transit of Mercury was also observed in 1881 by Professor Holden and others. The equipment at the Lick Observatory is admirable, and the sight excellent; but the income from the $90,000 endowment is too small to allow the desired work. There are but seven observers at Mount Hamilton, while at Greenwich, at Paris, and other observatories, there are from forty to fifty men. The total income for salaries and all other expenses is $22,000 at the Lick Observatory; at Paris, Greenwich, Harvard College, the United States Naval Observatory at Washington, etc., from $60,000 to $100,000 is spent yearly, and is all useful. Fellowships producing $600 a year are greatly needed, to be named after the givers, and the money to provide a larger force of astronomers. Mr. Lick's great gift has been nobly begun, but funds are necessary to carry on the work. LELAND STANFORD AND HIS UNIVERSITY. "The biographer of Leland Stanford will have to tell the fascinating story of a career almost matchless in the splendor of its incidents. It was partly due to the circumstances of his time, but chiefly due to the largeness and boldness of his nature, that this plain, simple man succeeded in cutting so broad a swath. He lived at the top of his possibilities." Thus wrote Dr. Albert Shaw in the _Review of Reviews_, August, 1893. Leland Stanford, farmer-boy, lawyer, railroad builder, governor, United States Senator, and munificent giver, was born at Watervliet, N.Y., eight miles from Albany, March 9, 1824. He was the fourth son in a family of seven sons and one daughter, the latter dying in infancy. His father, Josiah Stanford, was a native of Massachusetts, but moved with his parents to the State of New York when he was a boy. He became a successful farmer, calling his farm by the attractive name of Elm Grove. He had the energy and industry which it seems Leland inherited. He built roads and bridges in the neighborhood, and was an earnest advocate of DeWitt Clinton's scheme of the Erie Canal, connecting the great lakes with New York City by way of the Hudson River.