us commission, having been, in fact,
inserted in a different appropriation bill from that which contained
the former grant.

I, as secretary of the commission, made an application to the Treasury
Department to have the sum, late though it was, placed to our credit.
But the money had been expended and nothing could be now done in the
matter. [3] The computers had therefore to be discharged and the work
stopped until a new appropriation could be obtained from Congress.

During the session of 1876-77, $5000 was therefore asked for for
the reduction of the observations. It was refused by the House
committee on appropriations. I explained the matter to Mr. Julius
H. Seelye, formerly president of Amherst College, who was serving a
term in Congress. He took much interest in the subject, and moved
the insertion of the item when the appropriation bill came up before
the House. Mr. Atkins, chairman of the appropriations committee,
opposed the motion, maintaining that the Navy Department had under
its orders plenty of officers who could do the work, so there was
no need of employing the help of computers. But the House took
a different view, and inserted the item over the heads of the
appropriations committee.

Now difficulties incident to the divided responsibility of the
commission were met with. During the interim between the death of
Admiral Davis, in February, 1877, and the coming of Admiral John
Rodgers as his successor, a legal question arose as to the power
of the commission over its members. The work had to stop until
it was settled, and I had to discharge my computers a second time.
After it was again started I discovered that I did not have complete
control of the funds appropriated for reducing the observations.
The result was that the computers had to be discharged and the work
stopped for the third time. This occurred not long before I started
out to observe the transit in 1882. For me the third hair was the
one that broke the camel's back. I turned the papers and work over
to Professor Harkness, by whom the subject was continued until he
was made astronomical director of the Naval Observatory in 1894.

I do not know that the commission was ever formally dissolved.
Practically, however, its functions may be said to have terminated
in the year 1886, when a provision of law was enacted by which all
its property was turned over to the Secretary of the Navy.

What the present condition of the work may be