British Association, 387 



of Piazzi of Palermo. These three are the most celebrated of what 

 may be now termed the ancient Catalogues. About the year 

 1830, the attention of modern astronomeis was more particularly 

 directed to the expediency of re-observing the stars in these three 

 Catalogues, — a task which has much facilitated by the publication 

 of a very valuable work of the Astronomical Society, which ren- 

 dered the calculation of the observations to be made comparatively 

 easy, and, accordingly, observations were commenced and com- 

 pleted in several private and public Observatories, and from 

 which some curious results were deduced as, e. g, sundry stars 

 were found to be missinor, and others to have what is called 

 proper motion. And now a word as to the utility of this 

 cource of observation. It is well observed by Sir John Her- 

 schel, " that the stars are the landmarks of the universe ; every 

 well determined star is a point of departure which can 

 never deceive the astronomer, geographer, navigator, or surveyor." 

 We must have these fixed points in order to refer to them all the 

 observations of the wandering heavenly bodies, the planets and the 

 comets. By these fixed marks we determine the situation of places 

 on the earth's surface, and of ships on the ocean. When the places 

 of the stars have been registered celestial charts are constructed ; 

 and by comparing these with the heavens, we at once discover whe- 

 ther any new body be present in the particular locality under obser- 

 vation and thus have most of the fifty-seven small or minor planets 

 between Mars and Jupiter been discovered. The observations, how- 

 ever, of these smaller stars, and the registry of their places in Cata- 

 logues, and the comparisons of the results obtained at diiferent 

 and distant periods, have revealed another extrordinary fact no less 

 than that our own sun is not fixed in space, but that it is constantly 

 moving forwards towards a point in the constellation Hercules, at 

 the rate as it is supposed, of about 18,000 miles an hour carry- 

 ing with it the whole planetary and cometary system ; and if our 

 sun moves probably all the other stars or suns move also, and the 

 whole universe is in a pd^-petual state of motion through space. 



The second subject to which the attention of private observers 

 has been more particularly directed, is that of double or multiple 

 stars, or those which, being situated very close to one another ap- 

 pear single to the naked eye ; but when viewed through powerful 

 teloscopes are seen to consist of two or more stars. The measuring 

 the angles and distances from one another of the two or more com- 

 ponent stars of these systems, has led to the discovery that many of 



