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.

In 1836 Professor Albert Hopkins, of Williams College, and Professor
Elias Loomis, of Western Reserve College, Ohio, both commenced little
observatories. Professor Loomis went to Europe for all his instruments,
but Hopkins was able even then to get some of his in this country.
Shortly afterwards a little wooden structure was erected by Captain
Gilliss on Capitol Hill, at Washington, and supplied with a transit
instrument for observing moon culminations, in conjunction with Captain
Wilkes, who was then setting out on his exploring expedition to the
southern hemisphere. The date of these observatories was practically
the same as that on which a charter for the city of Chicago w