HARD WICKE ' S S CIE NCE- G O SSI P. 



33 



On Friday, June 4th, for the first time, I gave 

 them a meat diet, consisting of raw liver of fowl, 

 which they appeared to relish, and clung to in the 

 way described by your correspondent. This was in 

 the evening. Some raw mutton given them next 

 morning (the 5th) they almost left alone. 



I awaited with impatience the wonderful transforma- 

 tion into the full-blown frog. 



Did those gigantic Batrachians of old, such as 

 Cheirotherium labyrinthodon, go through similar pro- 

 gressive stages ! If so, one trembles to think of their 



tadpoles ! 



Nina F. Layard. 



ASTRONOMY AND METEOROLOGY. 

 By John Browning, F.R.A.S. 



AT the meeting of the Royal Astronomical 

 Society, held on November 12, Mr. Knobel 

 drew attention to a photograph of the ring nebula in 

 Lyra, in which it appears as elliptical in outline, 

 with a marked decrease in intensity at the extremity 

 at the major axis. A paper was read by Father 

 Perry, written by Mr. A. Cortis, of Stonyhurst, on 

 bands observed at the red end of the spectrum of sun 

 spots. 



Mr. J. Roberts read a paper on stellar photography 

 which he illustrated by a number of photographs 

 enlarged from the original negatives. Amongst them 

 were some of a portion of Cygnus. The negatives 

 were taken with a reflecting telescope twenty inches 

 aperture. The enlargements contain an average of 

 ninety-one stars to the square inch. Mr. Roberts 

 photographed the Pleiades group, giving an exposure 

 of three hours, and found the stars, Maia, Alcyone, 

 Electra, and Merope, all surrounded with a nebulous 

 haze, and that the space between these stars and 

 others of the group is rilled with nebulous light in 

 streamers or fleecy masses. 



Mr. Maunder gave some account of his observations 

 of the recent solar eclipse in the West Indies. Dr. 

 Schuster obtained two spectroscopic photographs, 

 one with the slit radial, and one tangential, and he 

 also obtained five photographs of the corona. Mr. 

 Maunder obtained seven photographs of the corona. 

 It becomes increasingly evident that the future of 

 astronomy lies with photography. In this connec- 

 tion a most important proposal has been made by 

 Dr. Gill to Admiral Mouchez, that an International 

 Congress of Astronomers shall be held in the spring of 

 1887, in order to arrange a scheme for making a 

 photographic survey of the whole heavens. This 

 proposal has met with general adherence, and a date 

 for the meeting of the congress will shortly be named. 

 The scheme is of the most extensive character, as it is 

 proposed to photograph all the stars visible in telescopes 

 of very large aperture. These will probably form an 

 atlas of fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred maps. 



Mr. J. E. Gore has been making further observa- 

 tions of a reddish star of about the sixth magnitude 

 near x* (54) Orionis, and finds from an examination 

 of its spectrum that it is probably a remarkable 

 variable star. Later observations have clearly 

 established that it is a regular variable star with a 

 period of about a year. In July the magnitude had 

 diminished below the twelfth, while on the 14th o 

 September, it had considerably increased in bright- 

 ness again. The magnitude was then nearly the 

 ninth, and by the end of October, it had become 

 about 8J. It was still increasing, and probably at- 

 tained its maximum in December. This star should 

 be carefully watched during the winter months, to 

 establish its exact period. 



In February, Mercury will be an evening star in the 

 latter half of the month. 



Venus will be an evening star throughout the 

 month. 



Mars will be an evening star, and will be near 

 and Venus. 



Jupiter will be nearly stationary between Virgo 

 and Libra. 



There will be no occultations or other celestial 

 phenomenon of interest visible at Greenwich during 

 the month. 



Rising, Southing, and Setting of the Principal 

 Planets at internals of Seven Days. 



Meteorology. — Serious illness prevented me from 

 writing my usual paper on Astronomy and Meteoro- 

 logy for the December number of this journal. In 

 the present I have given all of interest or importance 

 that has been done in the astronomical world, but the 

 meteorology of November would now possess but 

 little interest. The meteorology of December was, 



