Coast and Geodetic Survey Office,

WASHINGTON, D. C. March

1889.

The undersigned, a committee of the assistants of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, desire to announce on behalf of themselves and their associates, that they intend to ask the President of the United States to appoint Dr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, as Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. They are practically unanimous in this respect.

We address this letter to scientific men of America. To such we deem it unnecessary to enlarge upon the position held by Dr. Gould among them. All know and recognize it. But there are some points which may not be so generally known, and these we desire to set forth briefly.

Dr. Gould is no stranger to the Coast Survey. From 1851 to 1868 he was attached to the work, and for nearly fourteen years was in general charge of all its telegraphic longitude parties. Between 1853 and 1867 eleven printed reports bear his name.

The first telegraphic determination of the difference of longitude between Greenwich, England, and Cambridge, in New England, was under his general charge, and he personally superintended the observations at the eastern end of the cable, near Foilhollerum, in Ireland.

Soon after this last great work of 1866-67, he left the country to found an astronomical observatory, and educate native astronomers at Cordova, in the Argentine Republic.

What he has done for astronomy in the Southern Hemisphere,

sphere during the thirteen years of his stay there, has been
well set forth in the proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences at its session in April 1888, in Washington, when
the Watson gold medal was awarded to him for his dis-
tinguished and successful labors.

He left this country at a time when the great work under
the leadership of his chiefs and friends, Professors Bache
and Peirce, had risen to be recognized at home and abroad
as at the head of American Science.

He came back to find it suffering under sore and severe
trial, and without a Scientific Head. Following the instincts
of his whole life as a true Soldier of Science, he is ready to
again buckle on the harness and become its Chief.

We ask your support to urge, as promptly as possible,
the fitness and pre-eminent suitableness of this appointment.

Please address any one of the undersigned, at the Coast
and Geodetic Survey Office in this city.

C. O. BOUTELLE,
H. L. WHITING,
B. A. COLONNA.

Committee.