The Largest Telescope in the World.

The February number of Harper's Magazine contains a very interesting article on the great Lick Observatory of California, which, when completed, will contain the largest telescope in the world. The gentleman who contributed the money for this great undertaking, and for whom the observatory is named, was a Mr. Lick, a California capitalist. Up to 1873 he was known to the public only as a shrewd business man of a retiring and rather eccentric nature. In that year he surprised everyone by making over his entire fortune to a board of trustees to be expended for public and scientifle purposes. The object to which he devoted the large sum, $700,000, was for the construction of a telescope "larger and more powerful than any ever made before," together with an observatory which should be connected with it.

Perfectly ignorant of practical astronomy, he insisted on the aperture of his telescope being at least forty inches, which would admit twice as much light as the great Washington telescope, which, at that time, had just been completed. To build a telescope of such dimensions was a tremendous undertaking. Agents travelled through Europe visiting the most noted firms in England, France and Germany, without finding one which was willing to undertake the contract of making the glass disks from which the objectives must be made. At last, in 1880, a contract was made with Feil of Paris, for an objective of 36 inches clear aperture. For four years he has worked without success, every disk breaking on account of the heat which is necessary in the last stage of the making. Finally, last month he telegraphed that he had actually molded a glass without its being broken; and so at last the disk, the one vital organ of a telescope, is completed. The construction of the delicate yet powerful machinery, by which the tube sixty feet long is to be pointed toward any part of the heavens, and kept in motion by clock work, has not yet been commenced. However, the completion of this machinery is only a question of time, and when every thing is finished Lick Observatory will have the largest and most powerful telescope in the world.

The Observatory is built on the summit of Mount Hamilton, a prominence in the Coast Range of California, 4,400 feet above the sea-level, and about 14 miles east of the city of San Jose. The atmospheric conditions of the site are peculiarly favorable to astronomical observations, and with a good man in charge of the observatory, great results may be expected. Let us hope that an astronomor, skilled in his science and enthusiastic in his work, may be chosen for the place; for on him more than on the instruments will the reputation of the observatory depend.

M.