106 Transactions of the 



At the conclusion of the paper, after a few remarks f^'om the 

 President, a vote of thanks was proposed by the President, seconded 

 by the Vice-President, J. G. Grenfell, Esq., and carried unaniinously. 



Tlie President then announced that the meeting would proceed to 

 the election of officers for tlie current term, and stated that as all the 

 retiring Committee, consisting of Messrs. Dakvns, Moser, Heard, 

 Cartwi'ight, offered themselves for re-election, he should, to save time 

 and troul>le, propose the retiring Committee for re-election in a body, 

 unless any member objected. As no objection was raised the President 

 proposed this motion, which was seconded by the Vice-President, and 

 carried unanimously. 



The meeting then adjourned. 



ABSTPtACT OP PAPER ON THE TRANSIT OF VENUS. 



"When we are in a moving train the objects around seem moving in 

 the opposite direction to us, the nearer objects more quickly, the 

 further more slowly. This is because we have to turn our heads 

 round to keep them in sight, just as we should if they were mo-^ang 

 and we at rest ; and we do not turn our heads so quickly for tlie more 

 remote as for the nearer objects. We can roughly estimate the 

 distance at which an object is by seeing how far we turn our head, 

 or to speak more strictly, if we are given two places and know the 

 direction in which we have to look for each to see the object. This is 

 the way in which maps are constructed, and it is in fact by the same 

 method that we always judge distances ; the lines from an object to 

 our eyes are never quite parallel, and if the object is very near our 

 eyes we squint, and the further it is the less we squint, and by the 

 amount of squinting the mind judges the distance. 



The further the object is in proportion to the distance between the 

 places of observation, the less accurate the method becomes, and it 

 quite failed in the fixed stars, so it was proposed to take observations 

 at intervals of six months, so as to have as base the diameter of the 

 earth's orbit— a distance of more than 180 milhons of miles. The 

 distances of some of the nearest fixed stars are as follows, and contain 

 210,000 times the radius of the earth's orbit: Sirius, 1,375,000; 

 Polaris, l,9'i6,000. Light fi-om Polaris would take thirty years 

 reaching us. 



The distance of the sun is too great to be measured by the first 

 method, as will be readily seen from the following representation of 

 the solar system by Her'schel, — " On a IcacI field place a globe, two 

 feet in diameter, to represent the sun ; Mercury will be represented 

 Ijy a grain of mustard seed, on the circumference of a circle 15-1 feet 

 in diameter for its orbit ; Venus, a pea, on a circle 284 feet in dia- 

 meter ; the Earth also a pea, on a circle 430 feet in diameter ; Mars, 

 a rather large pin's head, diameter of orbit 650 feet ; Jupiter, a 

 moderate sized orange, half a mile ; Saturn, a smaU orange, four- 

 fifths of a mile ; Uranus, a large cherry, a mile and a half ; Neptune, 

 a large plum, two miles and a half." 



