The name of J. R. Hind, by the way, is the only English one included in the list of those who received a gold medal given to the discoverer of telescopic comets by Frederick VI, King of Denmark, who instituted the distribution of this award in the year 1835. The gold medal was also won by an American astronomer, Maria Mitchell, who discovered a comet, October 1, 1847, while engaged in making observations from the roof of the Nantucket Athenæum. When eighteen years old she was appointed librarian at the Athenæum, which position she held for twenty years. The roof of the building was her observatory. In 1865 she became professor of astronomy at Vassar College, a position she retained until her health permitted her to do so no longer. The grant of the medal by King Frederick VI was discontinued after the death of his successor, Christian VIII, in 1848. The Vienna Academy of Sciences formerly gave a gold medal to the discoverer of every new comet, but this also was discontinued in 1880. Then Mr. H. H. Warner, a wealthy American, came to the rescue and offered a prize of two hundred dollars for every unexpected comet found by an observer in Canada or U. S. A., which brings us to the story told in the autobiography of the late Professor E. E. Barnard, one of the most successful competitors. He had nineteen comets to his credit, resulting in the erection of what he quaintly termed “The house that was built with comets.” “Times were hard in the last of the ’seventies and the first of the ’eighties, and money was scarce. It had taken all that I could save to buy my small telescope. I had been searching for comets for upward of a year with no success, when a prize of two hundred dollars for the discovery of each new comet was offered (in 1880) by the founder of the Warner Observatory through the agency of Dr. Lewis Swift, its director. Soon after this it happened that I found a new comet and was awarded the prize. Then came the question, ‘What shall we do with the money?’ After due deliberation it was decided that we [referring to Mrs. Barnard] would try to get a home of our own with it. I had always longed for such a home where one could plant trees and watch them grow up and call them our own. So we bought a lot with part of the money, which was on what was afterwards called Belmont Avenue, but which was not then even a road. It was hard to find the lot after it was bought, for it was out in the open common. The place was in the midst of a scattered settlement of negro shanties, where the negroes had ‘squatted’ after the war, though on beautiful rising ground which I had selected in part because it gave me a clear horizon with my telescope.