Note 4 — THE GATHERER
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Footnote 4
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We feel as if it were a species of treason to record the fact, that, within the wide range of the British islands, there is only one observatory, and scarcely one, supported by the government! We say scarcely one, because we believe that some of the instruments in the observatory of Greenwich were purchased out of the private funds of the Royal Society of London. The observatories of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh (except a grant of 2,000l.), Armagh, and Glasgow, are all private establishments, to the support of which government contributes nothing. The consequence of this is, that many of them are in a state of comparative inactivity; and none of them, but that of Dublin, have acquired any celebrity in the astronomical world. Such, indeed, was the state of practical astronomy in Scotland, that within these few years, a Danish vessel, which arrived at Leith, could not obtain, even in Edinburgh, the time of the day for the purpose of setting its chronometers.—Q. Rev.