OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : DECEiMBER 10, 1862. 93 



The interval before the first echo was sufficient to permit the full 

 utterance of some five-syllabled words, such as " quadrupedante," 

 " anemometer," etc., — which would indicate as much as thirty-five 

 hundredths of a second, at the least possible estimate. 



He had not succeeded in learning the actual height of the chimney, 

 but had taken measures to do so, as he hoped by means of a careful 

 determination of the fundamental tone to succeed in setting the whole 

 column of air in vibration. 



Articulate sounds of all kinds appeared to be reproduced by the 

 echo without any loss of their original distinctness, except the sibilants. 

 ^Mr. Gould had found all the other consonants, and many of their com- 

 binations, such as pi, cl, tr, gn, kn, It, as also the aspirate, to be echoed 

 with as perfect enunciation as the original sound. But a hiss, or the 

 letter s, was repeated as a very sharp aspiration. The echo of z was 

 a softened aspiration, and even / and th could not be obtained with 

 distinctness. These (including of course x) were the only exceptions 

 to completeness of articulation in the echoes. A prolonged musical 

 note filled the cavity with resonance until it was almost unendurable, 

 and it was easy by sounding three harmonic notes, such as C, E, and 

 G, to obtain the effect of a chord in full perfection. 



Mr. Safford made the following communication : — 



In the sixth volume of his Astronomical Journal, Dr. B. A. Gould 

 has given a detailed investigation of the places of 48 stars within 25° 

 of the North Pole ; and has since published the results of a more com- 

 plete investigation of the places of 40 of these same stars, together with 

 those of 132 stars nearer the equator. The prefatoiy letters of the 

 pamphlet in which these latter results are contained (without any de- 

 tails of the investigation), bear the dates Sept. 10th, 1862, and Sept. 

 13th, 1862 ; though the work seems not to have been published till 

 some months later. 



At the meeting of the Academy on Sept. 9th, I presented the results 

 of a somewhat similar investigation upon the positions of 25 stars within 

 10° of the North Pole ; of which 4 were common to my own catalogue 

 and that of Dr. Gould ; and also upon the positions of an extensive list 

 of time stars, of which 49 were common to the two. My Memoir 

 (now in the hands of the Publishing Committee of the Academy) con- 

 tained also the positions of 47 stars extracted from the materials of 

 Wolfers's Tahulce Reductionum. 



