One deplorable result of the Civil War was that Gould's Astronomical Journal had to be suspended. Shortly after the restoration of peace, instead of re-establishing the journal, its founder conceived the project of exploring the southern heavens. The northern hemisphere being the seat of civilization, that portion of the sky which could not be seen from our latitudes was comparatively neglected. What had been done in the southern hemisphere was mostly the occasional work of individuals and of one or two permanent observatories. The latter were so few in number and so meagre in their outfit that a splendid field was open to the inquirer. Gould found the patron which he desired in the government of the Argentine Republic, on whose territory he erected what must rank in the future as one of the memorable astronomical establishments of the world. His work affords a most striking example of the principle that the astronomer is more important than his instruments. Not only were the means at the command of the Argentine Observatory slender in the extreme when compared with those of the favored institutions of the North, but, from the very nature of the case, the Argentine Republic could not supply trained astronomers. The difficulties thus growing out of the administration cannot be overestimated. And yet the sixteen great volumes in which the work of the institution has been published will rank in the future among the classics of astronomy. Another wonderful focus of activity, in which one hardly knows whether he ought most to admire the exhaustless energy or the admirable ingenuity which he finds displayed, is the Harvard Observatory. Its work has been aided by gifts which have no parallel in the liberality that prompted them. Yet without energy and skill such gifts would have been useless. The activity of the establishment includes both hemispheres. Time would fail to tell how it has not only mapped out important regions of the heavens from the north to the south pole, but analyzed the rays of light which come from hundreds of thousands of stars by recording their spectra in permanence on photographic plates. The work of the establishment is so organized that a new star cannot appear in any part of the heavens nor a known star undergo any noteworthy change without immediate detection by the photographic eye of one or more little telescopes, all-seeing and never-sleeping policemen that scan the heavens unceasingly while the astronomer may sleep, and report in the morning every case of irregularity in the proceedings of the heavenly bodies. Yet another example, showing what great results may be obtained with limited means, is afforded by the Lick Observatory, on Mount Hamilton, California. During the ten years of its activity its astronomers have made it known the world over by works and discoveries too varied and numerous to be even mentioned at the present time.