ALEXANDER GABRIEL CASSINI, his son, the fifth of the name, was born at Paris May 9, 1781, and began an astronomical career at a very early age, but soon relinquished this pursuit fur that of botany. lie was a judge of the Cour Royale, and died of the cholera at Paris, April 16, 1832.
We have thus the history of the occupation of an observatory by the members of one family for 122 years, and in spite of the deserved reputation of all the observers iu question for talent and assiduity, it must be asserted that the hereditary system did not succeed. Delambre remarks with some bitterness, that during the whole of the reign of the Cassinis not " one little catalogue of stars" issued from the national observatory. Picard had proposed the erection of large instrumcnts, And the rvation of right ascensions and declinations. To this Dominic) Cassiol was opposed, and in the usual course of things such an error would have lamed for his life, and would have been repaired by his successor. • But when the first Cassini was followed by a second
and a third wedded to the Ideas of their common ancestor, there could be no improvement; and the consequence is that the observatory of Greenwich, for the same period, bears away the palm from that of Paris in actual use to astronomy. lied the National Convention adopted the sound ideas of Count Cassini the case might have been altered. Tim errors of his predecessors appeared to be fully known to him, and had be been allowed to rectify them, it is probable that the fifth Caesini would not have abandoned the career of his ancestors; and we might have seen the observatory of Paris, such as it has been since the accession of Napoleon, still in the hands of the distinguished family who had connected their name with all its previous history.