President Eliot and several professors of Harvard College have petitioned Congress in regard to the naval observatory the petition was presented in the Senate on Friday last by Senator Hoar, and was similar in purport and phrase to several which had preceded it, and which came from the like officers of other principal colleges of the country. These ask that it shall be provided by law that whenever hereafter a superintendent shall be appointed for the United States Naval Observatory at Washington he shall be a professional astronomer of experience, and that the new observatory building, soon to be erected, shall be planned and built by a commission of scientific men. Hitherto the observatory has been an adjunct of the naval department.