460 Astronomical hiformation. — Ncjo Comet. 



Hilaire exhibited the head of a monstrous colt, foaled two 

 days before at the Royal School of Alfort. — M. Gaudin, of 

 Nantes, presented a memoir on the nature of negative quan- 

 tities. — M. TrauUe read a sketch on the Deluge, on its conse- 

 quences, and its producing cause ; and on the occurrence in 

 the north of the two continents of the bones of animals be- 

 longing to southern climates. 



LXXVI. hitelligence and Miscellmieous Articles. 



ASTRONOMICAL INFORMATION. 



pROFESSOR SCHUMACHER, whose whole time seems 

 -■- devoted to the promotion of astronomy, has recently 

 published a woi-k which will be highly useful to astronomers 

 in general. It may be recollected by most of our readers, 

 that the French Government published in 1801 a work con- 

 taining fifty thousand observations of stars, made at the Ecole 

 Militaire in Paris, by Lefran9ois Delalande, nephew of the 

 celebrated Lalande, between the years 1791 and 1801, with 

 a quadrant having a radius of 7^ feet. About 12,000 of these 

 stars have been reduced, and published at various times in 

 the volumes of the Connaissance de Terns ; but the remainder 

 have been of little or no use to astronomy, on account of the 

 labour of determining the corrections necessary to be applied 

 to bring them up to a given epoch. This labour is saved by 

 means of the work in question. It is entitled Tafeln zur Re- 

 duction der in der Histoire Celeste entJialtenen heobachtungen, 

 in one small volume octavo. The plan was first suggested 

 )y M. Bessel in the Astron. Nachrichten, No. 2 ; and has been 

 executed by Messrs. Hansen and Nissen, under the direc- 

 tion of M. Schumachei'. The rule for the reduction is very 

 simple ; being nothing more than the addition of three quan- 

 tities found in the tables, and which are taken almost by in- 

 spection. So that a person may, in a very few seconds, re- 

 duce any of the observations to the common epoch 1800. 

 The work is dedicated to the Astro?wmical Society of London. 



NEW COMET. 



M. Gambart, director of the observatory at Marseilles, dis- 

 covered a small comet in the head of Cassiopca on the morn- 

 ing of May 19th. It appeared as a nebiila of about 2' in dia- 

 meter ; round, and well defined. Its right ascension at that 

 time was O*" 20"", and its declination 48° 22' north. On June 

 1st, about midnight, its right ascension was P 51"*, and its 



declination 



