ASTRONOMY AND METEOROLOGY. 381 



stated that the title of the paper was probably sufficient to tell -what 

 he meant to say. But he wished it distinctly understood that he only 

 intended to give an account of a discovery by a man who was as 

 remarkable for his extreme modesty as for the eminence of the position 

 which he occupied among the scientific benefactors of the age. This 

 was intended for an account of Mr. Longstreth's discovery, and was 

 not his own. The very modest manner in which Mr. Longstreth had 

 announced his discovery was worthy of remark. He would read from 

 the preface to the published tables all that Mr. Longstreth had himself 

 said in relation to this great discovery. It was as follows : " The co- 

 efficients deduced from theory by Damoiseau, Plana, Pontecoulant, 

 and those deduced from observation by Burckhardt, (though diffcfing 

 considerably,) give the moon's place with nearly the same accuracy." 

 Previous to this tabular formula prepared by Mr. Longstreth, there 

 was no method of testing a theory. All will remember the celebrated 



O / 



dispute between Newton and Flamstead, as to the investigation of the 

 formulas for the longitude of the moon. Longstreth had obtained 

 results which involved the true theory of variations of the moon's lon- 

 gitude. The results of observations, now that we had a tabular for- 

 mula to compare them with, when spread over sufficient ground, would 

 be sure to be confirmed by theory subsequently. The Professor exhib- 

 ited the tables themselves, showing where Damoiseau and Plana 

 agreed, and where they began to differ, and stating that Prof. Airy, 

 of England, had compared the results obtained by Longstreth. By 

 means of Longstreth's formula we are sent back to the theories of 

 Damoiseau and Laplace. The difference had been ascertained to bo 

 greater between Plana and Laplace than Laplace and Damoiseau. We 

 are therefore travelling backward to the theory propounded by Laplace, 

 while the supposed advances made by latter physical astronomers are 

 assuming their true position. 



Mr. Longstreth's observations are now to be used in the American 

 Nautical Almanac. This alone renders that work of the utmost im- 

 portance to navigators of every nation, as well as of this country. 



TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, JULY 23TII, 1851. 



THE following description of the total eclipse of the sun, which 

 occurred July 28, 1851, is by Mr. G. P. Bond, of the Cambridge 

 Observatory, and was first published in the Boston Traveller. Mr. 

 Bond, in order to obtain a favorable position, visited Lilla Edet, 

 Sweden, a point crossed by the central line of the eclips3 : 



" The evening which preceded the day I have looked forward to with 

 so much anxious expectation, closed in without the slightest prospect 

 that the clouds and incessant rain of the last week would not con- 

 tinue, and effectually prevent our seeing the grand phenomenon which 

 had been the sole object of our journey. The morning was dark, with 

 heavy clouds drifting from the wonted quarter, and the rain, which had 

 ceased the night before, commenced falling again, as if the idea was a 

 new one. and it liked the novelty of it. We had nothing to do but 

 look as gloomy as the weather, and fancy how dark it would be when 



