Mr. Edward Crossley, a wealthy member of Parliament for Halifax, England, has given a reflector and forty-foot dome, which reached Mount Hamilton from Liverpool in the latter part of 1895.
Mr. Lick's gift of the telescope has stimulated a love for astronomical study and research, not only in California, but throughout the world. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific was founded Feb. 7, 1889; and any man or woman with genuine interest in the science was invited to join. It has a membership of over five hundred, and its publications are valuable. The society holds its summer meetings on Mount Hamilton. Very wisely, for the sake of diffusing knowledge, visitors are made welcome to Mount Hamilton every Saturday evening between the hours of seven and ten o'clock, to look through the big telescope and through the smaller ones when not in use. In five years, from June 1, 1889, to June 1, 1894, there were 33,715 visitors. Each person is shown the most interesting celestial objects, and the whole force of the Observatory is on duty, and spares no pains to make the visits both interesting and profitable.
James Lick planned wisely when he thought of his great telescope, even if he had no other wish than to be remembered and honored. Undoubtedly he did have other motives; for Professor Holden says, "A very extensive course of reading had given him the generous idea that the future well-being of the race was the object for a good man to strive to forward. Towards the end of his life, at least, the utter futility of his money to give any inner satisfaction oppressed him more and more."
The results of scientific work of the Lick Observatory have been most interesting and remarkable. Professor Edward E. Barnard discovered, Sept. 9, 1892, the fifth satellite of Jupiter, one hundred miles in diameter. He discovered nineteen comets in ten years, and has been called the "comet-seeker." He has also, says Professor Holden, made a very large number of observations "upon the physical appearance of the planets Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn; upon the zodiacal light, etc.; upon meteors, lunar eclipses, double stars, occultations of stars, etc.; and he has discovered a considerable number of new nebulæ also." Professor Barnard resigned Oct. 1, 1895, to accept the position of professor of astronomy in the University of Chicago, and is succeeded by Professor Wm. J. Hussey of the Leland Stanford Junior University.