ASTRONOMY AND METEOROLOGY. 331 



curve which a body would describe in its revolution about a fixed cen- 

 tre to which it was attracted by a force proportional to the mass of 

 the attracting body, and decreasing with the distance according to the 

 law of gravitation ; ' Copernicus having previously surmised that the 

 planetary orbits were circular, while Kepler, on the contrary, had sug- 

 gested that they were elliptical. Every one of us, moreover, delights 

 to recall to mind Newton's almost rapturous amazement when he 

 found that the answer to that problem was the general algebraic ex- 

 pression embracing all the conic sections the planets revolving in 

 ellipses, the satellites of Jupiter in circles, the comets in orbits both 

 parabolic and hyperbolic. 



" Accepting with the reverence due to it every iota of that sublime 

 demonstration, and bearing in recollection, with all homage for Sir Isaac, 

 everything he has written thereupon about the centrifugal and centri- 

 petal forces, may we not now ask ourselves anew now that we are 

 studying the phenomenon of the planetary ellipse by the light of that 

 newly-discovered grander central sun of suns, opened to view so very 

 recently by the researches of M. Maedler, of Dorpat whether there 

 may not lie near at hand, already within our grasp, a much less recon- 

 dite and far more easily comprehensible solution ? 



" Granting, as astronomical science does grant nowadays, that the 

 whole solar system, sun, comets, planets, satellites, are moving, whirl- 

 ing through space at the rate, it is computed, of 150,000,000 miles in 

 a year, wheeling onwards in the direction of a particular point 



in the heavens, namely, the star ^ in Hercules, speeding on in a cir- 

 cuit of such gigantic dimensions about that mighty central orb (Al- 

 cyone, the principal star in the Pleiades) lhat it requires for the com- 

 pletion of its stupendous orbit the lapse of no less astounding a cycle 

 of years than 18,200,000 is it not really conceivable, that in the 

 whirling of those concentric rings, the planetary orbits, along the path 

 of that marvellous circumference, the circles would by the very swift- 

 ness of their flight be lengthened that from being circular they be- 

 come elliptical ? precisely as the revolution of the earth upon its 

 axis causes it to be flattened at the poles while it increases its diame- 

 ter at the equator, rendering its form no longer a perfect sphere, but 

 rather what is geometrically designated on oblate spheroid. If what 

 may be called with the strictest accuracy the eternal law of celestial 

 dynamics manifests itself thus distinctly by its operation upon solid 

 inert matter, how much more comprehensible that it should be as dis- 

 tinctly evidenced through a more elastic medium not upon an orb, 

 but on an orbit." 



NEW VIEWS RESPECTING THE ATMOSPHERE. 



M. Quetelet, the well-known Belgian meteorologist, in a recently 

 published work, " Sur la Physique du Globe" expresses some views 

 respecting the constitution of the atmosphere different from those 

 hitherto generally entertained. He supposes (with Bunsen and others) 

 that the atmosphere extends to a height of 150 or 200 miles ; that the 

 oxygen and nitrogen are kept mingled by the currents of the at- 

 mosphere, so that at all accessible altitudes there is no appreciable dif- 

 ference in the proportions of these two gases. He supposes however 



