3(3 ANNUAL KECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



deep and full of shadow, and as forming a conspicuous object 

 on the dark gray Mare Vapornm. Having frequently ob- 

 served this region during the last twelve years, Dr. Klein 

 felt certain that no such crater existed there at the time of 

 his previous examinations. lie communicated his observa- 

 tions to Dr. Schmidt, of Athens, who assured him that this 

 crater was absent from all his numerous drawings of this 

 part of the lunar surface: neither is it shown by Schroter, 

 Lohrmann, or Madler. Dr. Klein made his discoveries 

 known generally, and they seem to have been partially con- 

 firmed by other observers. The Mare Vapornm, in which the 

 new crater is situated, lies close to the centre of the visible 

 surface of the moon, so that objects in this region are very 

 slightly affected by the lunar librations. It is also a part of 

 the moon which has been most carefully studied. Had this 

 new crater of Dr. Klein's appeared in a less well known re- 

 gion, much more doubt would have been felt as to whether 

 it had previously existed or not. 



COMETS; METEOR STREAMS. 



The comets of 1878 have been 



Comet I., discovered July 7, by Lewis Swift, of Rochester, 

 N. Y. This comet was only observed in America by Dr. C. 

 H. F. Peters, the majority of American observers being in the 

 West on eclipse expeditions. It is probably identical with 

 a comet discovered by P. Ferrari at Rome in July. On Julv 

 20, Tempel's periodic comet was found by Winnecke, quite 

 away from its ephemeris place. 



Orbit of Comet IV., 1873.* M. Raoui Gautier, of Leipsic, 

 has discussed all accessible observations of this comet, extend- 

 ing from August 20 to September 20, and, though the period 

 of visibility was not long, the data make it tolerably certain 

 that the orbit is elliptic, the sum of the squares of the re- 

 siduals being reduced from 81.18 on the hypothesis of a 

 parabola to 2.14 on that of an ellipse, while the probable 

 error of an observation is reduced from 6.04" to 1.14". The 

 eccentricity of the ellipse is, however, very large, correspond- 

 ing to a period of revolution which may perhaps range from 

 3000 to 3G00 years, so that this comet is to be classed among 

 those of very long period. 



* Astronoi/iisc/ie Nachrichten, No. 21G4. 



