Royal Astronomical Society. 243 



the mean of the times at which the ball is observed to pass the suc- 

 cessive hoops may be taken as in the observation of the transit of a 

 star. 



" If the ball is spherical, the time of its bisection by the hoops 

 may be noticed. 



" The observer is supposed to be at some distance from the appa- 

 ratus, so that his eye may not be very far distant from the plane of 

 any of the hoops." 



Colonel Batty sent for inspection a curious dial, of the workman- 

 ship of Nicholas Kratzer, horologier to King Henry VIII., and the 

 friend of Holbein. 



This consists of a block cut into various faces and hollows, each 

 serving for a dial, mounted on a foot, and furnished with a plumb- 

 line for rectification. There is a hollow on the top, which it is con- 

 jectured was meant to receive a compass. The date is 1542, and 

 the arrangement and ornamental work very elegant. 



Colonel Batty has supplied the following biographical notice of 

 Kratzer, extracted from Bliss's edition of Wood's Athena Oxonienses : 



" Nicholas Kratz was born at Munich, and educated at the uni- 

 versities of Cologne and Wittenburg. He came to England with 

 the degree of B.A., was made Fellow of Corpus Christi, Oxford, by 

 Bishop Fox, in 1517, gave lectures in astronomy in that university 

 on the king's order, and was appointed mathematical reader by 

 Cardinal Wolsey. 



" He seems to have written several mathematical treatises, which 

 are in still in MSS., chiefly in the Bodleian Library. One of these, 

 which is reputed to be his, is De Compositione Horologiorum. 



" He made the old dial which is now in the garden of Corpus, 

 and another standing on a pillar in the churchyard of St. Mary's. 

 He was living in the year 1550, and after his death many of his 

 books came into the hands of Dr. John Dee, and some into those of 

 Dr. Richard Forster." 



Lunar Eclipse of March 19, 1848. 



Extract of a letter from the Rev. Charles Mayne, Killaloe. 



"The eclipse was observed with an excellent thirty-inch telescope 

 of two inches aperture, fixed pretty firmly to the window- sash. 

 Nothing particular was noted at first. The moon was seen well at 

 intervals between clouds for an hour and a half, and then was com- 

 pletely covered. Some considerable time after, one of the family 

 going to the window exclaimed, 'The eclipse is over!' I went to 

 the window and saw the whole of the moon, the colour much like 

 that of tarnished copper, i. e. of a dullish red, some parts being 

 darker than others. After looking at it for some time, I perceived 

 with great surprise that the eclipsed part was marked, but (from the 

 general effect produced on the moon) only indistinctly. Clouds soon 

 after covered the whole sky, and the moon was not again visible till 

 about a quarter of an hour before the end, when the appearance 

 was as usual, the eclipsed part nearly black and the rest perfectly 

 bright. I am told that aurora was visible the same night." 



