POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



713 



including the tube, polar and declination 

 axes, counterpoise, and various adjustments, 

 weigh altogether between six and seven 

 tons, yet the whole apparatus is under 

 such control that one person can move 

 it about and manipulate it with ease. The 

 motion on the axes has been facilitated by 

 the application of antifriction apparatus to 

 them, so that it has not been necessary 

 to make them disproportionately small, as 

 has been the case with the axes of previous 

 large instruments. The circles are carefully 

 and accurately divided on a band of gold, 

 and so adjusted and illuminated that the 

 observer can, without stirring from his 

 chair, read all of the circles of the instru- 

 ment through a single reader-telescope at- 

 tached to the side of the main tube. The 

 builder of the instrument had great diffi- 

 culty in obtaining perfect glass for the ob- 

 jectives, and more than a year, from Oc- 

 tober, 1879, to December, 1880, was spent 

 in trying to produce a good lens ; neverthe- 

 less the instrument was completed in less 

 than half the time stipulated for by the 

 Austro-Hungarian Government. The observ- 

 atory in which the telescope is to be placed 

 is an imposing edifice of three hundred and 

 forty by two hundred and forty feet, and 

 stands at an elevation of two hundred feet 

 above the city, upon grounds of between 

 fifteen and sixteen acres in extent. 



The Cave-Temples of India. Dr. James 

 Fergusson's recent work on the " Cave- 

 Temples of India " abounds in illustrations 

 of the manner in which the art of building 

 in stone has been developed from wooden 

 construction. The beginning of the use of 

 stone in India is fixed, in Dr. Fergusson's 

 opinion, at the period of the reign of Asoka, 

 B. c. 250, for no stone buildings of an archi- 

 tectural character have been found the date 

 of which can be proved to be earlier than 

 that of this monarch. Moreover, all the 

 older examples are, in all their details, so 

 clearly copies of original types in wood, that 

 it is improbable that they could have been 

 executed by a people who had any pre- 

 vious knowledge of the principles of stone 

 architecture. All caves, down to the sev- 

 enth century, show the gradual transfor- 

 mation from wooden forms into those of 

 stone. The modifications mav be traced on- 



ward through nine centuries all that was 

 of stone being copied literally from carpen- 

 try forms, till the process was nearly com- 

 plete, and forms, originally distinctly wood- 

 en, had become appropriated to stone archi- 

 tecture. All this seems to have been effect- 

 ed without any direct foreign influence. 

 The earlier caves are adorned with sculpt- 

 ures in preference to painted figures, but 

 the later ones are covered with paintings of 

 a high order of art and great historical 

 interest, with colors perfectly fresh, while 

 sculpture, where it occurs at all, occupies a 

 subordinate position. No figure of Buddha 

 occurs before the end of the first century. 

 The liturgical forms, in all the older caves, 

 express a simple but exclusive type of 

 relic-worship. About one thousand dis- 

 tinct caves in India are mentioned as having 

 architectural importance, of which three 

 fourths belong to the Buddhists, one fifth 

 to the Brahmans, and five per cent, to the 

 Jains. The Buddhist caves are the oldest 

 and the most interesting. They are all true 

 caves, excavated at right angles to the face 

 of the rock in which they are formed, with 

 designs appropriate to their situation in it. 

 The caves of the Brahmans are often copies 

 of structures whose outlines have no ref- 

 erence to the position in which they are 

 placed, or the material out of which they are 

 carved. The Buddhist caves seem to have 

 been gradually developed from single plain 

 cells cut into the rock, the dwelling of a 

 single anchorite, into groups of eighteen or 

 twenty cells, arranged around a hall sixty or 

 seventy feet square, the roof of which was 

 supported by pillars elaborately carved, 

 the whole forming a vihara or monastery. 

 Such caves are usually found grouped to- 

 gether, five or ten, and even fifty or sixty 

 in immediate juxtaposition, so as to form 

 an establishment capable of accommodating 

 a large number of monks. To each of the 

 groups was attached one or more chaityas 

 or " church-caves," as they might be called, 

 which were analogous in form and use to the 

 choirs in Christian churches. The finest of 

 these is that of Carlee, near Poonah. 



Lunar " Craters." M. Faye recently de- 

 livered a lecture at the Sorbonne, on the 

 volcanoes of the moon, the substance of 

 which was an essay to show that there are 



