American astronomers must always honor the names of Rittenhouse and Bowditch. And yet in one respect their work was disappointing of results. Neither of them was the founder of a school. Rittenhouse left no successor to carry on his work. The help which Bowditch afforded his generation was invaluable to isolated students who, here and there, dived alone and unaided into the mysteries of the celestial motions. His work was not mainly in the field of observational astronomy, and therefore did not materially influence that branch of science. In 1832 Professor Airy, afterwards Astronomer Royal of England, made a report to the British Association on the condition of practical astronomy in various countries. In this report he remarked that he was unable to say anything about American astronomy because, so far as he knew, no public observatory existed in the United States. William C. Bond, afterwards famous as the first director of the Harvard Observatory, was at that time making observations with a small telescope, first near Boston and afterwards at Cambridge. But with so meagre an outfit his establishment could scarcely lay claim to being an astronomical observatory, and it was not surprising if Airy did not know anything of his modest efforts. If at this time Professor Airy had extended his investigations into yet another field, with a view of determining the prospects for a great city at the site of Fort Dearborn, on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, he would have seen as little prospect of civic growth in that region as of a great development of astronomy in the United States at large. A plat of the proposed town of Chicago had been prepared two years before, when the place contained perhaps half a dozen families. In the same month in which Professor Airy made his report, August, 1832, the people of the place, then numbering twenty-eight voters, decided to become incorporated, and selected five trustees to carry on their government. In 1837 a city charter was obtained from the legislature of Illinois. The growth of this infant city, then small even for an infant, into the great commercial metropolis of the West has been the just pride of its people and the wonder of the world. I mention it now because of a remarkable coincidence. With this civic growth has quietly gone on another, little noted by the great world, and yet in its way equally wonderful and equally gratifying to the pride of those who measure greatness by intellectual progress. Taking knowledge of the universe as a measure of progress, I wish to invite attention to the fact that American astronomy began with your city, and has slowly but surely kept pace with it, until to-day our country stands second only to Germany in the number of researches being prosecuted, and second to none in the number of men who have gained the highest recognition by their labors.