148 Royal Astronomical Society. 



magnitudes from Argelander's Uranometria ; and there are columns 

 of references for those stars which occur in the catalogues of Heve- 

 lius, Bradley, Mayer, Piazzi, the Astronomical Society, Groombridge, 

 Pond, Argelander, Cambridge (first), Johnson and Taylor. This 

 brief notice needs no further comment here ; for it would only be a 

 waste of time to add one word describing the excellence of the in- 

 struments employed, the finish and perfection of the reductions, the 

 care of the editor or the utility of the final results. We congra- 

 tulate all cultivators of astronomy on this noble addition to its Fun- 

 damenta, the influence of which will be instantly felt in every work- 

 ing observatory, and directly or indirectly throughout every depart- 

 ment of the science. 



In the Cambridge Observatory Professor Challis has confined him- 

 self in a great degree, so far as the meridian instruments are con- 

 cerned, to the planets and those double stars which have been ob- 

 served with the Northumberland equatoreal. A first series of obser- 

 vations of double stars is in preparation, and a Second Cambridge 

 Catalogue, in continuation of the one which was inserted by Mr. Airy 

 in our Transactions. The observations of the various recent comets 

 with the equatoreal above-mentioned will be valuable additions to the 

 several yearly volumes. 



Your Council have great satisfaction in directing the attention of 

 the Society to the Observatory recently established at Liverpool by 

 the corporation. In accordance Avith the advice of the Astronomer 

 Royal, the astronomical portion consists of a transit-room and a dome 

 for a large equatoreal. An adjoining apartment is appropriated to 

 the chronometers which are brought there for trial or rating, and to 

 the meteorological instruments ; the rest of the building forms a 

 comfortable house for the observer. A transit of five feet focal length 

 and four inches aperture by Simms, a sidereal clock and a mean time 

 clock by Molyneux, and a standard barometer (Newman's construc- 

 tion) by Adie of Liverpool, have been for some months in use, to the 

 perfect satisfaction of Mr. Hartnup, the director. The telescope of 

 the transit is a particularly fine one, and the mounting, which was 

 directed by the Astronomer Royal, is the strongest and stiff^est per- 

 haps in existence. With the two clocks (which are within hearing 

 of each other, and which are regularly compared whenever time is 

 got or chronometer errors ascertained) it forms a perfectly efiicient 

 apparatus for getting and keeping the time, and is adequate to the 

 most delicate determinations of right ascension. When the equato- 

 real is completed (the object-glass will have an aperture of eight 

 inches, the mounting is to be under Mr. Airy's superintendence), we 

 may expect most valuable assistance from the Liverpool Observatory 

 in the extra-meridian branch of practical astronomy. But the prin- 

 cipal and most interesting object of this establishment is, that of 

 giving true time to the great port of Liverpool ; an object which is of 

 high national importance, and which has hitherto been almost unac- 

 countably neglected. The observatory is admirably situated for this 

 purpose, on the brink of the Mersey at the entrance to the Waterloo 

 Dock : the horizon is good, and infinitely better than could have been 



