country, was a witness to this unwonted phenomenon, which, as notices of it came in one after another, was found to have extended over a large part of this continent and the adjoining ocean. The observations were carefully collected by him, were sifted, and reduced to order, and the remarkable fact appeared, among other things, that several showers had been observed before, within forty years, on the same day of November. The results appear in a memoir published in the 26th volume of the American Journal. The general explanation which Prof. Olmsted offers in this memoir, is "that the meteors of Nov. 13 consisted of portions of the extreme parts of a nebulous body, which revolves around the sun in an orbit interior to that of the earth; but little inclined to the plane of the ecliptic; having its aphelion near to the earth's path; and having a periodic time of one hundred and eighty-two days, nearly." In the course of his essay, Prof. Olmsted considered it as made out that the shower was periodical, and had its origin beyond the limits of the atmosphere. These conclusions have been won for science, although his general explanation of the phenomenon has been shaken by the facts since established, that another distinct period occurs in August, and another still in April, and that brilliant displays of this celestial wonder have been occasionally noticed also at other times of the year, as in the month of October; and although it fails to account for the numerous shooting stars of the same description, which may be seen every clear night. At present, it is believed, no theory satisfies the men of science; but the fact is settled that matter, in masses larger or smaller, and combustible when it enters our atmosphere, is met by the earth on its course round the sun, the matter being engaged in a similar revolution, and that these masses recur with tolerable steadiness at certain fixed times of the year, the more noticeable of which are in April, August, and November.

In his researches into these phenomena, Prof. Olmsted had several collaborators, of whom I will only name Prof. Alexander C. Twining, who reached, independently, some of the same conclusions with him, and Mr. Herrick, now the Treasurer of Yale College, who gathered many new facts in

regard to showers of stars from records of all ages, back into the remote past, and established or confirmed other periodical returns of the phenomenon. But to Mr. Olmsted belongs the credit of having called the notice of philosophers to this important phenomenon, as well as that of having first, if we except the ill-defined claims of Chladni, published a theory involving its cosmical origin and periodical character. His researches excited great attention abroad and commanded the respect of some of the most eminent scientific men. Biot expressed himself thus in a communication to the French Academy, in 1836. "It is scarcely necessary for me to state that all the circumstances of position, direction, and periodicity peculiar to the meteors of the 13th of November, have been collected and made known by Mr. Olmsted of America, in a very comprehensive and highly interesting work;" and he thanks him for having carefully collected and stated the observable elements of so curious a phenomenon. Olbers, the great astronomer of Bremen, praises him for his circumstantial description and collection of the particulars of the shower, and arrives at the same conclusion which Prof. Olmsted had adopted from the constant direction of the shower, that it did not participate in the rotation of the earth, but came from outer space into our atmosphere. And to mention but one testimony more, Humboldt, in the first volume of his Cosmos, speaks of the excellent description which Prof. Olmsted had given of the shower in November, 1833, and of his brilliant confirmation of Chladni's view that the phenomenon was of cosmical origin..

In his first memoir on the shooting stars, Prof. Olmsted says, that "the explanation of the cause of the meteors of November 13 may include that of the zodiacal light, although it is not responsible for it." Nothing since, so far as I am aware, has tended to settle the question whether the two phenomena have a close connection; but from this time the zodiacal light became a subject of interest in his mind; he often watched it; and the interest thus aroused here may have been the first moving cause to the important observations on this ap

pearance, which were made a few years since, by the Rev. George Jones, of the United States Navy.

Still another wonder of the sky, the aurora borealis, interested Mr. Olmsted's mind deeply from this time onward, partly on account of the connection which, as it seemed to him, might exist between it and one or both of the phenomena already named, and partly because the displays of the aurora, a few years since, were of unusual brilliancy. The resumé of the facts attending auroral appearances prepared by him is printed in the eighth volume of the Smithsonian Contributions, and is, no doubt, one of the leading papers on that subject. The author, in a brief exposition of his theory, advances the idea that the aurora is of cosmical origin, and has a secular period of sixty-five years.

Not long after the shower of shooting stars, in 1833, Prof. Olmsted and his fellow observer, Prof. Loomis, then a Tutor in Yale College, had the honor of being the first in America to descry Halley's comet, on its expected and calculated return from its aphelion in 1835. Mr. Loomis, having occasion, in his work on the recent progress of astronomy, to mention the Clark telescope and its unfortunate position, speaks of this observation and the results which it was a means of bring ing about, as follows: "On one occasion circumstances gave this telescope considerable celebrity. The return of Halley's comet, in 1835, was anticipated with great anxiety. The most eminent astronomers of Europe had carefully computed the time of its appearance; and the results of their computations had been spread before the public in all the popular journals. Expectation therefore was stimulated to an unwonted degree. The comet was first observed in this country by Professors Olmsted and Loomis, weeks before news arrived of its having been seen in Europe. This was the occasion of bringing prominently before the public the desirableness of having large telescopes, with all the instruments necessary for nice astronomical observations. It gave a new impulse to a plan which had been already conceived of establishing a permanent observatory at Cambridge upon a liberal scale,-a plan, however, which required the momentum of another and more

splendid comet for its completion. It kindled anew the astronomical spirit of Philadelphia, and excited a desire for instruments superior to those which they then possessed."

It may be added, with regard to Prof. Olmsted's relations to practical astronomy, that he was long desirous of having an Observatory established in connection with Yale College. His plan was to have two departments, one where the students could be initiated into the knowledge of the heavens, the other where scientific observers could make observations with superior instruments. Various ways were devised for attaining this end, in which he participated, but the great outlay of money necessary for this purpose, and the pressure of more immediate wants, rendered such an undertaking on the part of the college unadvisable. Mr. Olmsted at length contented himself with the project of a small observatory, intended chiefly for instruction; he set on foot a subscription for this purpose and put down his own name for a handsome sum, but even this plan met with difficulties and fell through.

Having thus looked at Prof. Olmsted as a teacher and a man of science, let us notice some of the more distinctive points in his mind and character, and then close with viewing him in his relations to men and to God. While he was excelled by many, in inventiveness and originality, he had a sound, lucid, accurate, discriminating mind, capable of concentrating all its powers on a given subject, of pursuing it to the best advantage, of presenting it to others as it appeared to him, in a happy way, and of patient laboriousness until the task, however long, was finished. One of his most characteristic traits of mind was method, which will be found, I think, to have entered into all that he did in life, whether in the shape of orderly arrangement of a subject, and due adjustment of details under a general head; or in the shape of mapping out and projecting before his thought the work which he had to do, so that time was economized, and things followed one another in due series; or finally in the shape of chosing what he would do, and making his purposes harmonize and arrange themselves in due order. To this trait, perhaps, is to be ascribed, in connection with another soon to be mentioned, that his life, as one of his

friends lately remarked, has been a successful one; that is, that pursuing a settled, orderly plan, he has gained what he aimed at, and made the most of his time and powers that the circumstances of his education and position admitted. To this source, also, we may refer his fondness for common-place books, as handmaids in the classification and reduction of knowledge, the advantages of which he often set forth to his classes. His regularity and punctuality belong to the same category. Another striking trait both of his mind and character, was a certain settledness exhibited both in tenacity of opinion and fixity of purpose. In fact, the resistance which his enfeebled body at the last offered to the assaults of death seems to show that his powers of life, too, partook of the same character. I do not mean, when I impute to him qualities like these, to say that he could not change his opinion on proof offered, or turn from his purpose whatever opposed, but I mean to call him the tenacem propositi virum, who, as the poet whom he often quoted says, could not easily be shaken off from his solid mind. This trait appeared in persistency of resolution, perseverance, firm adherence to an opinion once formed fidelity in friendship, steadiness in habits of life, attachment to rules once adopted. This gave him power amid the fluctuations and uncertainties of other men. This with method enabled him to pursue an even, settled path, a life of rule, not marked by fitful occasional exertions succeeded by listlessness, but filled with steady endeavor and accomplishment.

Another, and the last which I shall mention of his distinctive traits, was a love of beauty. This, which is quite akin to regularity and proportion, appeared in him under various forms. He loved the beauties of nature, and looked at them, as for instance at the clouds, with the eye no less of fancy than of philosophy. He loved flowers and shrubs. Gardening and the laying out of grounds gave him great pleasure, and when he removed to the present residence of his family in York Square, the business of laying out the square and keeping it in order devolved upon him. He was the chairman of the committee into whose hand the important work of rearranging and beautifying the city cemetery was committed, and