570 Chronicles of Science. [Oct., 
The extraordinary variable star, lately discovered near e Coron, 
appears to be identified with No. 2,765 of Argelander’s Zone + 26°, 
marked by Argelander as of 9'5 magnitude. Mr. Graham remarks 
that in Wollaston’s catalogue (1790), an object whose place reduced 
to 1866 also accords with that of the variable, is noted as follows:— 
“Double (Hers. v. 75) v. v. uneq....dist. 41”...pos? 16° s. f.; 
really quadruple.” Also that a nebula is marked on Cary’s globe 
as nearly as possible on the spot occupied. by the new star, and that 
this nebula is not in Herschel’s catalogue. Sir John Herschel, on 
the 9th of June, 1842, marked as visible to the naked eye a star 
whose place agrees so nearly with that assigned to this star, that 
“he cannot help believing it to be the same.” “If not a new 
star,” he adds, “it is a variable star which merits attention for its 
own sake.” 
On May 19th (when the star had diminished to below the 
5th magnitude) the Astronomer Royal’s spectrum-apparatus was 
mounted on the great equatorial, and the spectrum of the star was 
observed at intervals by Messrs. Stone and Carpenter till June 7th, 
on which day the line near F was “visible but desperately faint.” 
Their observations confirm the results obtained by Mr. Huggins, 
and described by him in our last Number. 
Mr. Browning points out the advantages to be gained by 
substituting a reflecting prism for the diagonal mirror in a 
“silvered-glass”” Newtonian. The prism reflects more light and 
with less false-colouring, for it is found that if a prism and a 
flat mirror placed side by side be made to reflect light from a 
common source, the circle from the prism is white, while that from 
the flat is strongly tinted with a reddish-chocolate colour. 
III. BOTANY AND VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 
America.—Discovery of a new locality for Scolopendriwm offici- 
narum.—This fern was first found in America by Pursh, who 
gives as a habitat in his Flora, 1814, “shady woods among loose 
rocks in the western parts of New York, near Onondago, in the 
plantation of J. Geddis, Esq.;” Nuttall in his Genera, 1818, 
records it as “ growing in the western part of the State of New 
York, in the crevices of calcareous rocks beneath Abies Canadensis 
and Taaus Canadensis ;” and Dr. Asa Gray, in the Botany of the 
Northern United States, mentions as a station, “limestone rocks, 
in a deep ravine at Chittenango Creek, below the Falls, where it 
abounds.” In May last, a new locality, where the Scolopendrium 
grows abundantly, was discovered in the United States by Lewis 
Foote, Esq., of Detroit, in the township of De Witt, about five 
