a place destined for observing the heavenly bodies; being generally a building erected on some eminence, covered with a terrace for making astronomical observations.

The more celebrated observatories are, 1. The Greenwich observatory, built in 1676, by order of Charles II. at the solicitations of Sir Jonas Moor and Sir Christopher Wren; and furnished with the most accurate instruments, particularly a noble sextant of seven feet radius, with telescopic sights.

2. The parish-observatory, built by the late Louis XIV. in the Faubourg St. Jacques.

It is a very singular, but withal a very magnificent building; the design of monsieur Perault: It is eighty feet high; and at top-is a terras

The difference in longitude between this and the Greenwich observatory is 2° 20' west.

In it is a cave, or cellar, 170 feet descent, for experiments that are to be made far from the sun, &c. particularly such as relate to congelations, refrigerations, indurations, conservations, &c.

3. Tycho Brahe's observatory, which was in the little little island Ween, or Scarlet island, between the coasts of Schonen and Zeland, in the Baltic.

It was erected and furnished with instruments at his own expense, and called by him Uraniburg.

Here he spent twenty years in observing the stars; the result is his catalogue.

4. Pekin observatory. Father Le Compte describes a very magnificent observatory, erected and furnished by the late emperor of China, in his capital, at the intercession of some Jesuits, missionaries, chiefly father Verbiest, whom he made his chief observer.

The instruments are exceedingly large; but the divisions less accurate, and the contrivance in some respects less commodious than those of the Europeans: the chief are, an armillary, zodiacal sphere, of six Paris feet diameter; an equinoctial sphere, of six feet diameter; an azimuthal horizon, six feet diameter; a large quadrant, six feet radius; a sextant, eight feet radius; and a celestial globe, six feet diameter.