July II, 1878] 



NATURE 



281 



responsibility and profit. On every ground, therefore, we 

 hope that Sir John Lubbock's proposal will at no distant 

 time be adopted by Parliament ; but in the meanwhile 

 there is a still more important department of teaching 

 which is wholly neglected, and concerning which the 

 deficiencies of home instruction are at least equally 

 manifest. We refer to a proper knowledge of the 

 influence of conduct upon life. It should be the duty of 

 every schoolmaster to try and make his pupils understand 

 how production— that is to say, industry — leads to wealth, 

 and how destruction — that is to say, idleness — leads to 

 poverty. The reason why confidence in others is neces- 

 sary to all enterprise, and the reason why honesty, in the 

 largest sense of the word, is the only root of confidence, 

 should in like manner be enforced by precept and illus- 

 trated by example ; and such teaching, if it could only be 

 made general, would do more to heal the breach between 

 capital and labour than all the panaceas of all the 

 politicians who have ever sought to figure as the " friends 

 of the working man." 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN 



Tempel's Comet, 1873, II. — Up to the time of writing 

 it would appear that this comet has escaped detection. 

 Even if there be no great error in the calculated position, 

 its faintness must render discoveiy difficult in the summer 

 skies, but it may be hoped nevertheless that a vigorous 

 eftort will be made in the next period of absence of moon- 

 light to recover the comet, as in the event of want of 

 success in the present year, it will be probably lost, or in 

 the same case as the short-period comet of De Vico of 

 1844, which, being missed at the second return in 1855, 

 has not been again observed. M. Schulhof has commu- 

 nicated to the French Academy a further ephemeris of 

 Tempel's comet, from which are extracted the places 

 subjoined : — 



At Paris 

 midnight. 



July 13 

 .. 17 

 „ 21 



», 25 



During this interval the comet's theoretical intensity of 

 light will be only three times that it possessed at the date 

 of the last observation in 1873, when it was the faintest 

 object that could be observed in a dark field with a 7-inch 

 refractor. A few days' difference in the date of perihelion 

 passage, which is probable enough, changes the geocentric 

 path materially, so that the search must be extended to 

 some distance on each side of the calculated place for 

 the day of observation. 



In its present orbit the comet cannot approach the 

 planet Jupiter within 0*62, and with M. Schulhof's period 

 of revolution it is easy to see that there will be no near 

 approximation of the two bodies during the next twenty 

 years — in such case the perihelion passages must always 

 occur at a season of the year when observations of the 

 comet would be barely, if at all, practicable. Hence an 

 additional reason for a very close search in the present 

 summer. 



The "Temporary Stars" of Kepler and An- 

 THELM. — The objects observed by Kepler in 1604 and by 

 Anthelm in 1670, which Sir John Herschel was wont to 

 describe as "temporary stars," but which there is, never- 

 theless, reason to believe to be still visible as telescopic 

 stars, will not escape the attention of observers who are 

 interested in the variables, at this season. As mentioned 

 some time since in this column. Prof. Winnecke remarked, 

 in 1875, a star of the twelfth magnitude on his scale, 

 which is very near the calculated place of Kepler's famous 



Chacornac's star 

 lom. 



I ...17 23 16. ..Ill 22*8 



Star, and to the place of a star entered upon Chacornac's 

 Chart, No. 52, as a tenth magnitude. We are able to 

 state that no star was discernible in this position with 7- 

 inches apei'ture on several occasions in 1872-74. The 

 position of Winnecke's star for 1855-0 is in R.A. I7h. 2ira. 

 49-33., N.P.D. 1 11^ i9'-3 ; it therefore precedes No. 16,872 

 of Oeltzen's Argelander by 33s. and is north of it 2' : 

 Argelander's star is of S-Qm. and the best reference point 

 in examination of the neighbourhood. For 1870*0 we 

 have : — 



R.A N.P.D. 



h. m. s. o y 



iSchonfeld's reduction 

 from observations of 

 Fabricius. 

 ( Read off from his 

 17 22 43... II I 22-5 < chart, therefore oiJy 

 ( approximate. 



Winnecke's star )^„^ o)/-\i_ ji.o^T. 



j2jn [ •••17 22 43... HI 20-8 > Observed at Strasburg. 



Argelander's 

 star S'pm. 



There is also a star of about 12m. in R.A. i7h. 22m. 

 57s., N.P.D. Ill" 24'-4, and therefore as near to the cal- 

 culated position of Kepler's star as Winnecke' s object, 

 which has not shown any variation during several years. 

 The difference of magnitude noted by Chacornac and 

 Winnecke rather points to their star as the one to be 

 closely Avatched. 



The place of the star discovered by Anthelm in 1670 

 has been calculated from the observations of Picard and 

 Hevelius by Prof. Schonfeld, and from those of Picard 

 only (as given in the Histoire Celeste of Lemonnier) by 

 Mr. Hind, their results differing only 2s. in R.A., and 

 o-'4 in N.P.D. The telescopic star ii-i2m., which is now 

 visible almost in the same position, was meridionally 

 observed at Greenwich in 1872, the result for i88o-o being 

 R.A. iQh. 42m. 45'is., N.P.D.' 62° 58' 32". Variation 

 extending to more than one magnitude has been remarked 

 in this object, during the last twenty-five years, thus, with 

 the near coincidence of position affording strong indica- 

 tion that it may eventually prove to be the star which 

 suddenly brightened up in 1670. A star of similar magni- 

 tude follows it 12 -Ss., about 3' to the north, and another 

 follows at 22'5s., about 2' northerly. In the years 1872-74 

 the presumed star of Anthelm was judged to be at times 

 sensibly equal to the first of these stars following it, at 

 others decidedly fainter — even at the first glance. 



Jeremiah Shakerley.— The transit of Mercury on 

 November 2, 165 1, it will be remembered, was predicted 

 by Jeremiah Shakerley, a young devotee of astronomy, 

 who, finding by the tables in his hands, apparently 

 founded upon the observations of Horrox, that it would 

 not be visible here, undertook the, at that period, great 

 voyage to India for the purpose of witnessing the pheno- 

 menon, which he observed at Surat. Vincent Wing 

 mentions this circumstance in his Astronomia Britanmca, 

 where the following passage occurs : — " Hanc conjunc- 

 tionem prasdixit idem D. Shakerloeus in Colloguio seu 

 Disceptatione, De Mei'cwio /« Sole Videndo, et postea 

 ipse transmigrans in [ndiam, conjunctionem hanc insig- 

 nem ibi videbat, eamque amicis in Anglia communicavit, 

 ut patet ex Literis ad Christophorttm Townlceum, Henri- 

 cum Osbormim, Londinensem, aliosque missis." 



No work of Shakerley' s exists in the libraries of the 

 British Museum, the Royal Observatory, or the Royal 

 Astronomical Society. His TabulcB Britannicce are in 

 the possession of the Royal Society, and we believe are 

 also found in the Cambridge University Library. The 

 immediate object of this note is to inquire if any reader 

 of Nature has met with the other works of Shakerley 

 mentioned by Lalande in his Bibliographie, or with a 

 publication in which the transit of Mercury in 165 1 was 

 predicted. 



