frosts, and promotes the setting and ripening of fruit in the open air."

I find in an old note book of my father's, dated 1879, "chlorophyllous
matter in leaves encouraged by electric energy, presumably by the blue
rays." In heating and cooking by electricity my father had made some
progress though he had not in 1880 employed his time in this direction.

Perhaps more remarkable than anything else presenting my father's great
scientific ingenuity was his improvements of the dynamo and the
invention of a new successful small traction engine.

In 1880 the complete distinction between alternating and direct currents
had not been made, and the device of a successful converter, for the
change of the former comparatively inert to the latter's dynamic
condition, only dreamed of. Yet in my father's notebook I find this
suggestive sentence: "It seems possible to devise an apparatus which
would deliver from an alternating circuit a direct current to a direct
current circuit."

I have dwelt somewhat upon my father's scientific acquirements and
genius in order to impress upon the reader the strictly legitimate
training I received in scientific procedure, and I have instanced
somewhat the status of his scientific development in 1880, because it
was at that time that he concluded to leave Irvington and locate his
laboratory and observatory elsewhere. And for the sake of his
astronomical interests he determined to find some place peculiarly well
fitted, on account of its atmospheric advantages, for astronomical
observations. It is necessary likewise to recall some of the facts then
known to astronomers and my father's own theories, in order to weave
into a logical sequence the incidents leading up to my positive