Photographing a Transit of Venus 223 



produced by synthesis, and as racemic acid could be broken 

 up into dextro- and levo-tartaric acids. 



1883. Jan. i8th, 32ist meeting. Professor Newcomb, 1 

 of the U.S. Observatory, Washington (a guest), described 

 the methods employed by the American expeditions in 

 photographing the transit of Venus. Instead of pointing 

 the telescope directly at the sun, they kept it fixed, and 

 threw the sun's image into it with a heliostat. The telescope 

 could then be of any length required, and the sun's image 

 did not need enlargement by the eyepiece. After describing 

 some details in making and recording the observations, he 

 said that this method had not overcome two difficulties 

 which affected astronomical observations, namely the 

 tremulousness of the atmosphere and the difference in its 

 refraction of the reddish light of the sun's limb and of the 

 whiter light of the central part of its disc on which Venus 

 is projected. 



Professor W. James, 2 of Harvard College, U.S.A. (a guest),, 

 gave a brief account of investigations into the sense of 

 dizziness experienced by deaf mutes. As the semicircular 

 canals of the ear are now supposed to be the organs of this 

 sense, and as they or their nerves are presumably destroyed 

 in a large number of these mutes, such persons ought not 

 to be liable to dizziness in whirling. An examination of 

 over 600 such persons showed about one-third to be in this 

 abnormal condition. But of these a certain number spoke 



1 Professor Simon Newcomb, who was born on March I2th, 1835, 

 graduated at Harvard, was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the 

 United States navy and to the Naval Observatory at Washington. He 

 organized an expedition to observe the transit of Venus in 1874, and 

 observed that of 1882 at the Cape of Good Hope. In 1884 he also became 

 a Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. He has made many additions 

 to astronomical science and has written a number of memoirs and books 

 on different branches of it. 



2 Professor William James was born at New York on Jan. nth, 1842, 

 and graduated at Harvard as M.D. ; afterwards receiving the LL.D. degree 

 at Princeton, and those of Ph.D. and Litt.D. at Padua. He became 

 Professor of Physiology, of Philosophy and of Psychology at Harvard, 

 and was also appointed Gifford Lecturer at Edinburgh. He wrote not a 

 few valuable books and memoirs on philosophical and psychological 

 subjects, on human immortality and on pragmatism, dying about 1912. 



