125 History of Astronomy for the Yco.r 1S06. 



years past sent into the world. The zeal and intelligence of 

 M. Vaudover,the architect of govenlment, have given a new 

 degree of utility to this ohservatorv ; and science is much 

 indebted to him. It was he who arranged the halls of the 

 Institute in Maxar'in College. 



Phy-,\,ue Mtcan'ique, by E. G. Fischer, honorary member 

 of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and professor of mathe- 

 matics and physics in the same city t translated from the 

 German, with notes by M. Biot, member of the Imperial 

 Institute of France. 



Madame Biot, to whom we owe this translation, has ren- 

 dered a service to physics. We here find the properties 

 of the ujovcments of solidsj fluids, electricity, magnetism, 

 the phaenomena of light, the theory of achromatic glasses. 

 ls\. Biot, who has made some learned notes, complains 

 that the German language is not sufficiently cultivated in 

 France, and that Gehlen's dictionary has not been trans- 

 lated. The excellent inquiries of Volta upon the Galvanic 

 tfj'ccts of electricity, the work of M. Chladnv upon the vi* 

 btations of surfaces, was not known until eiajht years after 

 it was published ; and the work of the saa^e author upon 

 stones which fall from the skies was not known among us 

 until the nittenric stouc at Aigle attracted the public atten- 

 tion to aerolites. Nevertheless, the reality of the fall of 

 these masses had been long before established from pre- 

 ceding facts, and the force of the reasoning in the work of 

 M. Chladny. I have already complained several times m.y- 

 self that the German language was not sufficiently culti- 

 vated in Fiance ; and were it not for the Ephemcrides of 

 Berlin by M. Bode, and the journal of M. de Zach, we 

 should know nothing at all of the astronomy of Germany. 

 Messrs. Burckhardt and Delambre make us acquainted iri 

 the same manner as the BihliQlheqiLe Bntann'iqu^ of Geneva 

 acquaints us with what is passing in England. 



Theory of the present surface of the earth, or rather im- 

 partial incjuirics upon the time of the arrangement of the 

 present surface of the earth, founded solely upon facts, 

 without system and without hypothesis ; by M. Andre. 

 It refers every thing to the deluge j but there are interesting 



observations. 



