xxiv GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



have justified the Austrian government in the construction 

 of a new one, which is said to be on the most magnificent 

 scale. A refractor of 30-inch aperture is reported as having 

 been ordered for it ; one of 12-inch aperture has already been 

 furnished by Alvan Clark & Sons. 



The famous private observatory of Mr. Warren de la Rue, 

 at Cranford, near London, has been given up, and the instru- 

 ments have been presented to the University of Oxford. A 

 building proper for the reception and use of this apparatus, 

 and constituting a new astronomical observatory devoted to 

 physical astronomy, so called, is being built by the university. 



Pogson, at Madras, announces that with increased means 

 at his command, he expects to clear away the large arrears 

 of work that have accumulated at that observatory. 



At Quito, the erection of an observatory is announced in 

 connection with the university. Its director, Father Men- 

 ten, has secured some excellent instruments from Germany. 



Astronomical Instruments. We note under this head that 

 the experience of Professor Newcomb as to the efficiency of 

 the 26-inch Clark refractor at Washington has been exceed- 

 ingly gratifying, and shows that such mammoth instruments 

 can be used with great success. The new photographic 

 lens of 13 inches' aperture, for the observatory at Cordoba, 

 in the Argentine Confederacy, has been safely received. 



Among the instruments auxiliary to the work of an ob- 

 servatory may be noticed the calculating machine, devised 

 by Mr. Grant, of Cambridge, and applicable to the computa- 

 tion of the reduction of star places. 



The magnificent private observatory of Lord Lindsay, at 

 Dunecht, furnishes occasionally, through the ingenuity of its 

 possessor, some important improvements in the delicate ap- 

 paratus of observational astronomy; the machinery for driv- 

 ing his equatorial is said to be so perfect that no deviation 

 whatever from its required movement can be perceived. 



It is probable that among the apparatus of every well-fur- 

 nished observatory there will hereafter be included some in- 

 strument for the regulation or the exact measurement of 

 personal errors in time observations ; the independent re- 

 searches of several European astronomers, combined with 

 those of the United States Coast Survey and Naval Observ- 

 atory, show, in fact, that on the one hand the errors can be 



