ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



XIII 



Comet of 



Brorsen Bruhns 

 Lexell - - - 

 Pons Winnecke 



Period in years. 



- - - 5.6 

 - - 5.6 



- - 5.6 



D'Arrest 6.4 



Biela 6.6 



Faye 7.4 



Peters 12.8 



Mechain Turtle - - - 13.6 



Westphal 69.0 



Pons 70.7 



DeVico 72.8 



Olbers 74.0 



Brorsen 75.0 



Halley 76.1 



Flamsteed 190.0 



Oh-ott 241.0 



Charles V. 292 



Bremiker 344.0 



Brorsen ------ 401.0 



Perry 4220. 



An able article in the July (1858) number of the Westminster Re- 

 view, on " Recent Astronomy, and the Nebular Hypothesis," takes de- 

 cided ground against the results of what it terms " the rash speculations 

 of late years," as embraced in the belief that all nebulae are galaxies of 

 stars. The writer defends the nebular hypothesis with much force 

 of argument, and asserts that " the various appearances these nebulas 

 present are clearly explicable as different stages in the precipitation 

 and aggregation of diffused matter." He asserts that, on the one hand, 

 all the leading phenomena of the solar system, and the heavens in 

 general, are explicable " by the nebular hypothesis," and, on the other 

 hand, that " the common cosmogony is not only without a single fact 

 to stand upon, but is at variance with all our positive knowledge 

 of nature. 



M. Wolf, of Zurich, in a letter addressed to General Sabine, states 

 that further researches into the phenomena of the relation between 

 the spots on the sun and terrestrial magnetism have led to the 

 discovery that there is even a greater correspondence between the 

 solar spots and terrestrial magnetism than he had originally imagined, 

 and that sufficient data now exist to satisfy even the most skeptical of 

 the actual correspondence between these phenomena. 



The European Statistics of Suicide, recently published in France 

 by Mr Lisle, show that England is no longer at the head of the dreary 

 list. The French author proves that France is the highest in the 

 scale, and Russia lowest. In London, we have _>ne suicide in 8,250 

 people. Paris gives one in 2,221. For the whole English population, 



