ASTRONOMY. 319 



iuvented, many clays must elapse before the arrival in Paris of news 

 from the northern parts of Europe. 



A credit of 96,000 francs ($19,200) has been granted by the Chambers 

 of Belgium to found an observatory at the University of Li^ge. It will 

 be chiefly devoted to the instruction of students in geodesy and geo- 

 graphical surveying. 



A new observatory has been founded at Tashkent, under the direc- 

 tion of Lieutenant Pomerantzeff. The principal instruments are — 



1. A Repsold meridian circle of 4.82-inch aperture and 55.27 focus, 

 with a circle divided to 2' and read by 4 microscopes. 



2. A Merz equatorial of 6.34 inches aperture. 



3. A sidereal clock by Hohwu. 

 The geographical position is : 

 Latitude, 40° 18' 32".2. 



Longitude, 2^^ 35'" 52M5, east of Pulkova. 



From two letters, printed in I/Astronomie, we learn that Don Jose 

 Gonzales has built and equipped and also endowed a small observatory 

 in Bogota, Colombia. Its principal instruments are a 4-inch equatorial, 

 a small meridian circle, spectroscopes, &c. The fa9ade bears the inscrip- 

 tion: '• Observatoire Flammarion. — A la France. — A Flammarion. — " 



ASTRONOMICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



The fourth and last fascicule of the second volume of Bibliograpliie 

 de VAstronomie, by J. C. Houzeau, director of the Eoyal Observatory 

 of Brussels, and A. Lancaster, librarian of the same, has lately ap- 

 peared. The authors have tabulated the number of astronomical papers 

 by the dates of publication, from 1600 to 1880, and have plotted there- 

 suits in a curve of astronomical works, which illustrates with striking 

 effect the rapidity with which the number of these articles is increasing 

 with time. Political revolutions have but slightly aflected this pro- 

 gressive activity — excepting onlv the great wars of the first French 

 empire, which occasioned a remarkable decrease in the number of pa- 

 pers, the epoch of greatest depression being the year 1815. Important 

 astronomical discoveries and events have had the most marked effect 

 in stimulating the production of astronomical works ; for example, the 

 last transit of Venus, 1874, and the discovery of Neptune, 1846. Of 

 some 1,800 articles indexed in this volume of the Bibliographie, 6,000 

 are written in the French language, 5,800 in English, 4,400 in German, 

 800 in Italian, and 600 in Latin, the remaining 400 being divided un- 

 evenly among nine other languages. The four most prolific names are 

 those of Secchi, Lalande, Zach, and Bessel, while those who have aver- 

 aged the greatest number of papers per annum during the period of 

 their activity are Flammarion, Secchi, and Proctor. The sections of 

 this volume are nine in number, and relate to the History of Astronomy, 

 Astronomical Biography, Spherical Astronomy, Theoretical Astronomy, 

 Celestial Mecliauics, Astronomical Physics, Practical Astronomy, Mon- 



