8 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



seemed to demand the assumption of a very large and quite 

 improbable difference in the value of the constant of aberra- 

 tion for the two stars that come under the observation. In 

 general, it will be noticed that none of the stars as yet ex- 

 amined by Dr. Briinnow have revealed any large parallaxes, 

 and the problem of determining the distances of the fixed 

 stars by means of angular measurements promises still to re- 

 main the most difficult and vexatious of those whose solution 

 is attempted by the astronomical observer. 



GILLISS'S SOUTHERN ZONE OF STARS. 



Admiral Sands, in his annual report with reference to the 

 work of the Naval Observatory, states that observations to 

 be of any value to the world must be published. If they are 

 not, the time and labor spent upon them are simply wasted ; 

 and yet they are so much more easily made than reduced, that 

 nothing is more common than to see them lie hidden for years 

 before the computations necessary to fit them for publication 

 are completed. The Naval Observatory has been enabled to 

 resuscitate from its store-rooms the zones of stars observed 

 by Captain Gilliss, in Chili, in 1850-52, and their reductions 

 are now in such a state of forwardness that the resulting star 

 catalogue will appear in 1875, in the volume of Washington 

 observations for 1873. Thus it will be seen that all the valu- 

 able records which were at one time locked up in the archives 

 of the observatory will soon have been given to the world. 

 Report of the Sec. of the JVavy, 1873, 97. 



THE MOVEMENTS OF THE NEBULAE. 



Mr. Huggins, of London, whose observations on the motions 

 of some stars toward and from the earth have Ion 2: been 

 quoted as the first contribution ever made to our knowledge 

 of this subject, states that for the last two years he has been 

 giving considerable attention to a similar inquiry in connec- 

 tion with the nebulae. His method of observation, as is well 

 known, consists in comparing the lines in the spectra of the 

 heavenly bodies with the corresponding lines in the spectra 

 of terrestrial substances. In his observations on the nebula?, 

 he has compared a certain line in a spectrum of lead with 

 that line in the nebula which is supposed to belong to the 

 spectrum of hydrogen ; each nebula being observed on sev- 



