Along the whole line of professional and
amateur observation substantial progress is being made, but in certain
new directions, and in some old ones, too, the advance is very rapid.
As never before, public interest is alive to the attractions and value
of the work of astronomers. The science itself now appeals to a
constituency of students and readers daily increasing in numbers and
importance. Evidence of this gratifying fact is easily obtained. There
is at the libraries an ever-growing demand for standard astronomical
works, some of them by no means intended to be of a purely popular
character. Some of the most influential and conservative magazines on
both sides of the Atlantic now find it to be in their interest to
devote pages of space to the careful discussion of new theories, or to
the results of the latest work of professional observers. Even the
daily press in some cities has caught the infection, if infection it
may be called. There are in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and
other centers of population on this continent leading newspapers
which, every week or so, publish columns of original matter
contributed by writers evidently able to place before their readers in
an attractive form articles dealing accurately, and yet in a popular
vein, with the many-sided subject of astronomy.
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