"This beautiful building was erected by an association of gentlemen, who
raised a good deal of money, but, of course, not enough. They built the
Grecian temple, but they could not supply it with priests.
"About a hundred years ago Colin Maclaurin had laid the foundation of an
observatory, and the curious Gothic building, which still stands, is the
first germ. We laugh now at the narrow ideas of those days, which seemed
to consider an observatory a lookout only; but the first step in a work
is a great step--the others are easily taken. There was added to the
building of Maclaurin a very small transit room, and then the present
edifice followed.
"When the builders of the observatory found that they could not support
it, they presented it to the British government; so that it is now a
government child, but it is not petted, like the first-born of
Greenwich.
"There are three instruments; an excellent transit instrument of six and
a half inches' aperture, resting on its y's of solid granite. The
corrections of the errors of the instrument by means of little screws
are given up, and the errors which are known to exist are corrected in
the computations.
"Professor Smyth finds that although the two pillars upon which the
instrument rests were cut from the same quarry, they are unequally
affected by changes of temperature; so that the variation of the azimuth
error, though slight, is irregular.
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