e so classed on account of the novelty of the questions at issue.
It affords an instructive example of the possibility of cases in
which strict justice cannot be done through the established forms
of legal procedure. It is also of scientific interest because,
although the question was a novel one to come before a court, it
belongs to a class which every leader in scientific investigation
must constantly encounter in meting out due credit to his assistants.

The plaintiff, Christian H. F. Peters, was a Dane by birth, and
graduated at the University of Berlin in 1836. During the earlier
years of his manhood he was engaged in the trigonometrical survey
of the kingdom of Naples, where, for a time, he had charge of an
observatory or some other astronomical station. It is said that, like
many other able European youth of the period, he was implicated in
the revolution of 1848, and had to flee the kingdom in consequence.
Five years later, he came to the United States. Here his first
patron was Dr. B. A. Gould, who procured for him first a position
on the Coast Survey, and then one as his assistant at the Dudley
Observatory in Albany. He was soon afterward appointed professor
of astronomy and director of the Litchfield Observatory at Hamilton
College, where he spent the remaining thirty years of his life.
He was a man of great learning, not only in subjects pertaining
to astronomy, but in ancient and modern languages. The means at
his disposal were naturally of the slenderest kind; but he was the
discoverer of some forty asteroids, and devoted himself to various
astronomical works and researches with great ability.

Of his personality it may be said that it was extremely agreeable so
long as no important differences arose. What it would be in such a
case can be judged by what follows. Those traits of character which
in men like him may be smoothed down to a greater or less extent
by marital discipline were, in the absence of any such agency,
maintained in all their strength to his latest years.

The defendant, Charles A. Borst, was a graduate of the college and had
been a favorite pupil of Peters. He was a man of extraordinary energy
and working capacity, ready to take hold in a business-like way of
any problem presented to him, but not an adept at making problems for
himself. His power of assimilating learning was unusually developed;
and this, combined with orderly business habits, made him a most
effective and v