On July 25 occurs the centenary of the death of the astronomer, Fearon Fallows, the first director of the observatory founded at the Cape of Good Hope through the action of the Commissioners of Longitude. Born in July 1789, at Cockermouth, Cumberland, the birthplace of Dalton, Fallows was brought up to his father' trade of weaving, but by study and the assistance of a clergyman was able to become a school teacher and then to proceed to Cambridge. Entering St. John's College, he graduated as third Wrangler in 1813, Sir John Herschel being Senior Wrangler, and became mathematical lecturer at Corpus Christi College. On Oct. 20, 1820, he was chosen director of the proposed observatory at the Cape, and to him fell the lot of choosing the site and of installing the first instruments. Immediately on arrival in 1821, with small instruments made by Dollond and Ramsden, he began observations of the principal southern stars, the results of which are contained in his catalogue of 273 stars contributed to the Royal Society in 1824. Later on, he published an account of a series of pendulum experiments. His work was done with but little assistance and in discouraging circumstances. He himself suffered from the effects of sunstroke, and his death at the early age of forty-two years was brought about through scarlatina and dropsy. He died at the naval base, Simons Town, but his grave, marked by a slab of black Robben Island stone, is near the observatory. He left some four thousand observations, which were afterwards reduced by Airy. His successors at the Cape have included Henderson, Maclear, Stone, and Sir David Gill.