n watching the heavens. And not
unfrequently, prizes of discovery which the most perfect appliances
failed to grasp, have fallen to the share of ignorant or ill-provided
assiduity.

Observers, accordingly, have multiplied; observatories have been founded
in all parts of the world; associations have been constituted for mutual
help and counsel. A formal astronomical congress met in 1789 at
Gotha--then, under Duke Ernest II. and Von Zach, the focus of German
astronomy--and instituted a combined search for the planet suspected to
revolve undiscovered between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The
Astronomical Society of London was established in 1820, and the similar
German institution in 1863. Both have been highly influential in
promoting the interests, local and general, of the science they are
devoted to forward; while functions corresponding to theirs have been
discharged elsewhere by older or less specially constituted bodies, and
new ones of a more popular character are springing up on all sides.

Modern facilities of communication have helped to impress more deeply
upon modern astronomy its associative character. The electric telegraph
gives a certain ubiquity which is invaluable to an observer of the
skies. With the help of a wire, a battery, and a code of signals, he
sees whatever is visible from any portion of our globe, depending,
however, upon other eyes than his own, and so entering as a unit into a
widespread organisation of intelligence. The press, again, has been a
potent agent of co-operation. It has mainly contributed to unite
astronomers all over the world into a body animated by the single aim of
collecting "particulars" in their special branch for what Bacon termed a
History of Nature, eventually to be interpreted according to the
sagacious insight of some one among them gifted above his fellows. The
first really effective astronomical periodical was the _Monatliche
Correspondenz_, started by Von Zach in the year 1800. It was followed in
1822 by the _Astronomische Nachrichten_, later by the _Memoirs_ and
_Monthly Notices_ of the Astronomical Society, and by the host of varied
publications which now, in every civilised country, communicate the
discoveries made in astronomy to divers classes of readers, and so
incalculably quicken the current of its onward flow.

Public favour brings in its train material resources. It is represented
by individual enterprise, and finds expression in an ample liberality.