The work of no department of the University is better known and recognized in the scientific world at large than is that of the Astronomical Observatory and its dependant stations. Yet there is probably not a department of the work of which the average student at Harvard is more thoroughly ignorant. Once a year for a limited period the members of the senior class are permitted to go to the observatory and have a look through the telescope, and that gives them very nearly all the information they get during their four years, of the work of the department. In nearly every other department of the University public lectures are occasionally given or meetings held at which the work is described or discussed. Why should a similar thing not be done in the astronomical department?

Astronomy does not hold the place it once had among the subjects considered essential to a liberal education. No "popular" course in it is given. This is not to be regretted, for it is certainly no loss to the science that the "popular" and superficial teaching of it has been dropped, with many of the other fixtures of the old curricula. But it would undoubtedly be of great interest still, to many members of the University, to learn somewhat more fully than they can from the catalogue, what, in general, the work of the Observatory is; and what noted contributions it makes to science from year to year. Without presuming to suggest what points of interest could be selected, we believe that there are enough to furnish material for at least one very interesting public lecture in the course of the year.