ould be compelled, by the developed powers of their
telescopes, to mount high above the "grosser clouds" in order to use
them,[1639] had been justified by the event.

James Lick, the millionaire of San Francisco, had already chosen, when
he died, October 1, 1876, a site for the new observatory, to the
building and endowment of which he had devoted a part of his large
fortune. The situation of the establishment is exceptional and splendid.
Planted on one of the three peaks of Mount Hamilton, a crowning summit
of the Californian Coast Range, at an elevation of 4,200 feet above the
sea, in a climate scarce rivalled throughout the world, it commands
views both celestial and terrestrial which the lover of nature and
astronomy may alike rejoice in. Impediments to observation are there
found to be most materially reduced. Professor Holden, who was
appointed, in 1885, president of the University of California and
director of the new observatory affiliated to it, stated that during six
or seven months of the year an unbroken serenity prevails, and that half
the remaining nights are clear.[1640] The power of continuous work thus
afforded is of itself an inestimable advantage; and the high visual
excellences testified to by Mr. Burnham's discovery, during a two
months' trip to Mount Hamilton in the autumn of 1879, of forty-two new
double stars with a 6-inch achromatic, gave hopes since fully realised
of a brilliant future for the Lick establishment. Its advantages are
shared, as Professor Holden desired them to be, by the whole
astronomical world.[1641] A sort of appellate jurisdiction was at once
accorded to the great equatoreal, and more than one disputed point has
been satisfactorily settled by recourse to it.

Its performances, considered both as to quality and kind, are unlikely
to be improved upon by merely outbidding it in size, unless the care
expended upon the selection of its site be imitated. Professor Pickering
thus showed his customary prudence in reserving his efforts to procure a
great telescope until Harvard College owned a dependent observatory
where it could be employed to advantage. This was found by Mr. W. H.
Pickering, after many experiments in Colorado, California, and Peru, at
Arequipa, on a slope of the Andes, 8,000 feet above the sea-level. Here
the post provided for by the "Boyden Fund" was established in 1891,
under ideal meteorological conditions. Temperature preserves a "golden
mean"; the barometer is