a petty barony as for adjusting the boundaries of Transatlantic empires. When once its place has been thoroughly ascertained and carefully recorded, the brazen circle with which that useful work was done may moulder, the marble pillar may totter on its base, and the astronomer himself survive only in the gratitude of posterity; but the record remains, and transfuses all its own exactness into every determination which takes it for a groundwork, giving to inferior instruments--nay, even to temporary contrivances, and to the observations of a few weeks or days--all the precision attained originally at the cost of so much time, labour, and expense.' But for these strictly utilitarian purposes a comparatively small number of stars would meet our every requisite. In the narrow sense of which Sir John Herschel is here speaking, we have no use for anything beyond the smallest of catalogues; and if the question before us is, 'Why are we continually extending our catalogues?' the following words of a more recent writer[4] on the subject will set forth the real explanation:-- 'A word in conclusion, suggested by the history of star-catalogues. We have no difficulty in understanding that it is necessary to study the planets, and a reasonable number of the brighter stars, for the purpose of determining the figure of the earth, and the positions of points upon its surface; but the use for a catalogue of ten thousand stars, such as La Caille compiled, is not just so apparent. Nay, what did Ptolemy want with a thousand stars, or Tamerlane's grandson, born, reared, and destined to die amidst a horde of savages, however splendid in their trappings? There is not, and there never was, any real, practical use for the great volumes of star-catalogues that weigh down the shelves of our libraries. The navigator and explorer need never see them at all. Why, then, were these pages compiled? Why have astronomers, from Hipparchus's time to the present, spent their lives in the weary routine-work of observing the places of tiny points in the stellar depths? Does it not seem that there is something in the mind of man that impels him to seek after knowledge--truly--for its own sake? something heaven-born, heaven-nurtured, God-given ... that there is something in man common to him and his Creator, and therefore eternal ... in beautiful accord with the plain statement that "God made man in His own image?"' [4] Mr. Thomas Lindsay, _Transactions of the Astronomical and Physical Society of Toronto_, 1899, p. 17. CHAPTER VIII THE ALTAZIMUTH DEPARTMENT