AK'iKXTINE REPUBLIC. 



ASTRONOMICAL PROGRESS. 



.iii.ui an*! di-trust. A change in the Cabinet 

 \va- made "ii Maich :i I . when rapt. Onofre Betze- 



,. i- appointed Mini.-ter of Marine and Eze- 

 niiit-l Ilamo-. Mejia Minister of Agriculture. When 

 ( ,,n"ii .- a-- inl'.led on .May 3 the President stated 

 in in- mrs-.age that the accounts for the preced- 

 in-' \.-ar pnu-tically balanced, the revenue hav- 

 ing f M -'n $;.V>oo.ooo in gold and tlie expenditure 

 oiiiv $20(>.000 in excess. The conversion fund 

 niiiountctl to *s.:>00.000, and would reach $15,000,- 

 ooo bv the end of the year. The unification proj- 

 ect \\a- announced, having for its chief object a 

 rnlu. -i i.n of the service of the floating debt. The 

 ri-Miltiii;.' improNcment in Government finances 

 \\si-. expected to lead to more immigration and 

 coloni/ation. The bill was presented to Congress 

 >n .him- 11. It authorized the issue of gold con- 

 ...IH up to the amount of $435.000,000. bearing 4 

 IKT rent, intciot and redeemable in fifty years, 

 tin- annual rate of amortization being one-half of 1 

 IM-I cent. The>c were intended for the conversion 

 of all or pail of the existing debts whenever such 

 conversion would benefit the Government. The 

 n-w loan would be secured on the customs rev- 

 enue, the Department of Customs having to de- 

 IMI- it daily eight-tenths of 1 per cent, of its receipts 

 lor every "$5,000.000 of bonds issued. The Senate 

 pave its approval to the plan. In the Finance Com- 

 mission of the House of Representatives it ob- 

 tained a majority of a single vote. When the 

 debate began the Opposition press and the hostile 



IMtlitieians stirred up wide-spread alarm. Students 

 ield excited meeting's and smashed the windows 

 of the Government newspaper organs. On July 

 3 they stoned the house of the President and as- 

 sailed* ex- President Pellegrini. Shots were ex- 

 changed with the police, who were unable to cope 

 with the disturbance. Both houses of Congress 

 having given consent, a state of siege was pro- 

 claimed on .Inly 4 for six months. On July 5 

 the President sent a message to Congress with- 

 drawing the unification bill. The Minister of Fi- 

 nance resigned, and Dr. Marco Avellaneda was 

 appointed to the office on June 10. The popular 

 excitement having subsided when its cause was 

 removed, at the end of July the state of siege was 

 abolished. Further Cabinet changes were the ap- 

 pointment of Senor Seru as Minister of Public 

 Instruction and Justice on July 11, and of Dr. W. 

 Kscalante as Minister of Agriculture on July 17. 

 The new Minister of Finance stated that, although 

 the pressure of the external and internal floating 

 debt made the condition of the treasury difficult, 

 the revenue collected greatly exceeded the esti- 

 mates, and the budget would close with a surplus. 

 The Government was unwilling to repeal the con- 

 version law. and would increase the conver- 

 sion fund, which would not be diverted to any 

 other use unless Chile compelled the Argentine 

 Republic to purchase more war vessels in order to 

 preserve its naval superiority, the fund being 

 ivailable for war purposes. The Patagonian 

 nundary dispute between the Argentine Republic 

 Chile had been referred to arbitration. Pend- 

 the decision it was proposed by the Argentine 

 Government that both nations should cease aii"- 

 menting their war material. Chile agreed to this 

 t after the election of a new President in Chile 

 o victorious party proposed to acquire a new 

 t tie-ship and two cruisers. The Argentine Gov- 

 ernment was determined in that case to make a 

 like addition to its own navy, but after some cor- 

 respondence the agreement for the maintenance of 

 the naval status quo was renewed. A bill for 

 emission of more paper money failed. 



A 5l?? A ' (8ee under UXIT ED STATES.) 

 ARKANSAS. (See under UNITED STATES ) 



ASTRONOMICAL PROGRESS IN 1900- 



1901. The advancement of astronomy in these 

 two years has been progressive and satisfactory 

 in all its branches. More especially is this true 

 in its stellar, spectroscopic, and photographic 

 departments. They furnish a record of progress 

 and discovery that has not been equaled in a 

 decade. 



Eros. The problem of the Sun's distance, which 

 has baffled astronomers for two thousand years, 

 has lately come close upon a solution. The most 

 surprising thing about it is that it has been ac- 

 complished by a process never before dreamed of. 

 The Earth's distance from the Sun being the base 

 line by which the distances, magnitudes, velocities, 

 etc., of all celestial objects are measured (except 

 those of the Moon), it follows that its distance 

 should be determined with mathematical exact- 

 ness. Heretofore the only process known to ascer- 

 tain the Sun's distance with any prospect of ex- 

 actness was by the transits of Venus across the 

 Sun's face. By her transit of June 3, 1769, the 

 Sun's distance was computed to be 95,000,000 

 miles. By her transits in 1874 and 1882 the dis- 

 tance was reduced to 93,000,000, and by the new 

 process to 92,850,000. This reduction of the Sun's 

 distance has reduced the assumed distances and 

 magnitudes of all the heavenly bodies except the 

 Moon. These transits, however, occur at irregu- 

 lar periods, and therefore are not often available. 

 They occur as follow: Once in eight years, then 

 in one hundred and five and a half, then again in 

 eight, then in one hundred and twenty-one and a 

 half, then in eight, and one hundred and five and 

 a half, and so on forever. The next will take 

 place June 8, 2004, after an interval of one hun- 

 dred and twenty-one and a half years. They al- 

 ways happen in December and June; the last 

 was on Dec. 6, 1882. 



On Aug. 13, 1898, Witt, of Berlin, discovered 

 an asteroid, or planetoid, or minor planet (as they 

 are variously called), revolving round the Sun, as 

 do all the 465 now known that are between Mars 

 and Jupiter. This one, however, which received 

 the name Eros, revolves between the Earth and 

 Mars, and can approach nearer the Earth than 

 any heavenly body except the Moon. When it is 

 in perihelion while the Earth is in aphelion, and 

 rising when the Sun is setting, of course it will be 

 on the meridian at midnight, and can approach 

 the Earth within 35,000,000 miles. These favor- 

 able conditions are not often simultaneously ful- 

 filled. They would have been, however, had the 

 discovery been made four years earlier. The next 

 will take place in 1930. But there was quite a 

 favorable opposition in December, 1900; so near, 

 in fact, as to allow the determination of its paral- 

 lax. The nearer a planet approaches the Earth, 

 the greater will be its parallax, and if this is ex- 

 actly ascertained, Kepler's third law gives the 

 distance of the Earth from the Sun, and from the 

 other planets also. The distance from the Earth 

 to this little speck of a world (supposed to be but 

 18 miles in diameter), when nearest, is 0.15 in 

 terms of the Earth's distance from the Sun, while 

 Venus in transit is 0.27, or almost twice as far. 



Kepler's third law is : " The squares of the peri- 

 odic times of the planets' revolution round the 

 Sun are proportional to the cubes of their mean 

 distances from him." In the latter part of De- 

 cember, 1900, the little planet was so near that 

 two observers, one in New York and the other in 

 California, obtained measurable angles, which 

 gave its distance from the Earth's center, and so 

 the great problem was solved without going to 

 remote countries to observe the transits of Venus. 

 As the little planet was as near the Earth as it 



