CORRESPONDENCE ON ASTRONOMICAL ANNOUNCEMENTS. 75 



growth of desires and needs for more minute information respecting 

 sudden or transitional phenomena, improved methods and formulas will 

 doubtless be correspondingly developed. 



For the present purposes of this Institution the system it has adopted 

 will (with probably some slight improvement) prove sufficient. 



Yours, very respectfully, 



Spencer F. Baird. 



Letter from the Litchfield Observatory of Hamilton College^ Clinton, Oneida 

 County, New Yorlc, April 28, 1882, to the Secretary of the Smithsonian 

 Institution. 



Dear Sir: At the meeting of the International Astronomical Society 

 at Strasburg in September last, the matter of telegraphic communica- 

 tions of astronomical discoveries was considered. In the committee ap- 

 pointed upon this subject, after some discussion about the " Phrase-Code" 

 of the (Boston) " Science Observer," it was agreed that the code of the 

 Smithsonian Institution (Misc. Coll., 263), be recommended for general 

 use — at least for the present. A resolution to that eflect was adopted 

 by the Society (S. Eeport in Viertelgahrschrift, vol. 16, page 285 and 351). 

 But there was a strong feeling expressed against the manner in which 

 most of the telegrams of comet discoveries, sent through the Smithsonian 

 Institution, lately had come to hand in Europe. They were worded 

 without the slightest regard to the Smithsonian programme, therefore 

 unintelligible, and worse than no information at all, by reason of causing 

 fruitless painstaking to astronomers searching for the object. 



Unwilling that astronomers abroad should be led to throw the blame 

 thereof upon the Smithsonian Institution, I take the liberty to suggest 

 that you would refuse to forward dispatches of the kind, if they are not 

 made out in conformity with the Smithsonian programme. This pro^ 

 gramme has been distributed so largely throughout the United States (in 

 the Smithsonian Annual Keports and as a circular), that any amateur dis- 

 coverer who desires to avail himself of the channel of communication 

 so liberally offered by the Smithsonian Institution can hardly be ig- 

 norant of it. Any delay, therefore, will be his own fault, if he neglects 

 following the prescribed form. 



Yours, very respectfully, 



C. H. F. Peters. 



Letter from the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, May 10, 1882, to- 

 Prof C. H. F. Peters, of the Litchfield Observatory, Clinton, K Y. 



Dear Sir : In reply to your favor of April 28, I am gratified that 

 the astronomical convention at Strasburg has api)roved of the Smithson- 

 ian code for telegraphic announcements. With regard to the irregulari- 

 ties noticed, it may be said that very few of the dispatches received by 

 this Institution comply fully and literally with the published programme. 



