Meteorological and Astronomical Notices. 175 



its abatement in strength, and the rise of the barometer, shewed 

 that the storm then had passed away, and in the same path, and with 

 the same characteristics, that all other Chinese typhoons have 

 done beibre. This one was therefore nothing new, that a captain of 

 so large a vtssel should have been taken unawares by it. More- 

 over, those typhoons or hurricanes have been proved, by such a 

 legion of melancholy catastrophes, to be far more than ships built 

 by mortal hands can stand, when they get into the vortex (in one 

 towards the end of the last century, in those same seas, 100,000 

 men are said to have perished) ; that no passenger merchantman, 

 steamer, or sailing vessel, is justified in not getting out of its way, 

 when there is plenty of sea-room. And if the steam company do 

 not mulct their captain in the cost of all the sails, ropes, masts, and 

 boats carried away, it is to be hoped that the underwriters will take 

 up the case. At any rate, if so prominent an instance should induce 

 some official recognition of the importance of making and enforcing 

 the use of a series of hurricane charts, science will be the better for 

 it, and the lives of those of our countrymen who have to voyage in 

 tropical seas, will be so much the safer. 



Saturn's Rings. — According to a lithographed drawing prepared 

 by Mr Lassel, as the result of his observations with his reflecting 

 telescope, the new dark ring, discovered by Prof. Bond, is now broader, 

 that is, extends more nearly to the ball, than when first seen. Mr 

 Hartnup's observations with the Liverpool equatorial also give the 

 same result. 



To account for the alteration in the appearance of the rings, the 

 separations sometimes visible and sometimes not, Mr Bond not 

 finding that such effects could well result from any difference in 

 form of surface, as by mountains on the rings, has supposed that 

 they may be fluid. The discrepancies of observations might then 

 be more easily explained by a variable constitution of the ring, con- 

 sisting in the frequent formation of divisions and their subsequent 

 annihilation. Prof. Benjamin Pierce, of Harvard University, U.S., 

 has followed in the same line, and has shewed that a more recondite 

 application of the principles of fluid action lead to more definite views. 



He has demonstrated, indeed, from purely mechanical considera* 

 tions, that the ring cannot be solid, and he maintains, uncondition- 

 ally, that there is no conceivable form of irregularity, and no com- 

 bination of irregularities, consistent with an actual ring, which would 

 serve to retain it permanently about the primary, if it were solid ; 

 and he considers that La Place's statement of the sustaining power 

 of an irregularity, in which he has been blindly followed by his 

 successors, was but a careless suggestion dropped at random, and 

 never subiected to the scrutiny of a rigid analysis. But Prof. 

 Pierce shews that in the case either of one irregulai-ity, or of many, 

 that they will not permanently support the ring if solid, but that 

 they will rather tend to accelerate its fall and destruction. 



