660 Chronicles of Science. | Oct., 
education is entirely abandoning the subject to which they are com- 
mitted by their charter; and that they will properly discharge the 
duties which it imposes on them only by promoting the professional 
education of the agriculturist—this being done by giving encourage- 
ment and guidance to the existing means of agricultural education. 
II. ASTRONOMY. 
(Including the Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society.) 
We have but few important advances to chronicle in general astro- 
nomy, although a glance at the proceedings of the Astronomical 
Society for the last few months will show that slow but sure progress 
has been made by English observers. We may commence by re- 
minding our readers that a prize of 200 ducats (about 901.) has been 
offered by the Academy of Sciences at Vienna for the best research on 
the movements of the fixed stars. The last day for sending in the 
papers is fixed for December 31, 1865. We cannot help thinking 
that the time here allowed is far too short. The base line used by 
astronomers in investigating the movements of these distant bodies 
being the diameter of the earth’s orbit round the sun, it will take six 
months to accumulate merely one set of observations, and as the minute- 
ness of the observed movements renders it highly desirable to verify 
the first obtained data by numerous subsequent observations, it 1s 
scarcely likely that any new and striking measures of parallax can be 
included in the memoirs, unless, indeed, the principal observations 
have already been made by the competing astronomers. In such a 
case as this science would be more advanced by offering a larger sum 
as a prize, and allowing the time to extend to five or six years. 
Our readers are doubtless well aware that a new Astronomical 
Society was founded last year at Heidelberg. This society is essen- 
tially international in its character, and numbers amongst its members 
not only German, but also English, French, Italian, and Russian 
astronomers. Several of its most eminent members are dividing the 
work between them; some are investigating the disturbances which 
have taken place in the movements of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, 
Saturn, and Uranus, in some cases going back as far as 1770. Others 
have divided the asteroids amongst them, each member taking a planet 
under his care, and observing its motions periodically. A society of 
earnest workers acting in this manner is more likely to further the 
objects of their science than are any two of the so-called learned 
societies as at present constituted. 
The star 40,196 (Lalande) is noted for its singular variability, and 
M. Goldschmidt still continues his accurate investigations on its 
changes. The result of his observations is, that it accomplishes its 
cycle in a period of 197 days. It remains nearly invisible for 61 days, 
