14 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



Rrottiberanees arc observed at Palermo, Home, Greenwich, 

 Moscow, ( HI valla, etc. 



The chief signal-officer of the army lias proposed to the 

 various observatories of this country, both public and private, 

 to co-operate in physical observations of the sun. Every 

 phenomenon of interest should be registered, whether relat- 

 ing to spots, faculse, or protuberances, etc. Each observa- 

 tory that is willing to take up any special field, or that al- 

 ready occupies such a field, is requested to give its results, or 

 such part of them as it is willing to give, to the Signal Bureau 

 for record in its Monthly Weather Review. Thus a prompt 

 publication is secured. In response to this invitation, the 

 United States Naval Observatory is furnishing a record of 

 the number of spots daily observed on the sun's disk. This 

 record is prepared by Mr. D. P. Todd. It is to be hoped that 

 a regular series of photographic records of sun-spots can be 

 made by some one or more observatories in the East, and by 

 at least one on the Western coast. In order to render such 

 observations of the sun complete, the establishment of these 

 stations and one in Japan is required. 



Captain J. Waterhouse, of India, publishes a very com- 

 plete account (illustrated with photographs) of the prepara- 

 tions by himself and Tacchini to observe the solar eclipse of 

 1875, April G, in the Nicobar Islands. No photographs of the 

 spectrum of the corona were obtained, on account of cloudy 

 weather, but the details of the methods adopted are of value. 



Sir George Airy sends to Nature a list of thirty-seven 

 ancient eclipses which have been computed by Hind, and of 

 which the original manuscript calculations are preserved at 

 the Royal Observatory. The earliest of these is B.C. 885, 

 the latest A.D. 1G52. There are twenty-one previous to the 

 Christian era, and sixteen after it, and the whole is a most 

 valuable contribution to chronology and the history of as- 

 tronomy. Celoria, of Milan, has also published in No. XI. 

 of the publications of that Observatory a discussion of the 

 solar eclipses of 1239, June 3, and of 1241, October C. 



The important total solar eclipse of 1878 will probably be 

 well observed in America. Estimates for $8000 have been 

 submitted to Congress for American parties. 



The reductions of the American Transit of Venus observa- 

 tions are in a forward state. 



