344 



NATURE 



\Feb, 28, 1878 



interference of Prof. Julius Schmidt, the Director of 

 the Observatory at Athens, whose elaborate lunar work 

 is well known, that the complete publication of Lohr- 

 mann's charts has been effected. A pretty detailed 

 prospectus has been circulated. The price of the entire 

 work will be 2/. 105. 



The Periodical Comet, 1873 II. — The interesting 

 comet of short period discovered by Tempel on July 3, 

 1873, was, it is understood, taken in hand by one of the 

 able astronomers attached to the Observatory of Vienna, 

 in which case an ephemeris may soon be expected. The 

 last calculation of elements assigned a period of revolu- 

 tion of only 1,850 days, and it is possible that observations 

 in November, 1873, may have indicated a still shorter 

 period, so that the comet may again arrive at perihelion 

 very early in the summer. Four days after the perihelion 

 passage this comet makes a very near approach to the 

 orbit of Mars, but the recent discovery of satellites to this 

 planet detracts from the importance which would other- 

 wise have attached to a study of the comet's motion, in 

 the hope of eventually improving our knowledge of the 

 planet's mass. 



Minor Planets.— Of all the members of this group 

 the elements of which have been calculated. No. 153, 

 Hilda, discovered by Palisa at Pola on November 2, 1875, 

 makes by far the nearest approach to the orbit of Jupiter, 

 and on this account it is desirable the planet should be 

 kept under observation at successive oppositions. So far, 

 it does not appear to have been recognised during the 

 present one, though an ephemeris extending to February 

 20, was given in number 84 of the Berlin Circtilar ; this 

 will have been owing, no doubt, to its situation in a part 

 of the sky for which we have no charts showing very 

 small stars. According to the estimation made by 

 Palisa on the night of discovery when the planet's distance 

 from the earth was 3*22, and from the sun 4*20, its bright- 

 ness at present will be equal to that of a star of the 

 thirteenth magnitude. Subjoined is a continuation of the 

 ephemeris deduced from the best orbit yet available, that 

 by Kiihnert, which is founded on observations from 

 November 2 to December 30, 1875 : — 



Hilda : at Greenwich Midnight. 



R.A. N.P.D. Dist. from 



h. m. s. „ / Earth. 



February 28 ... 7 57 36 ••• 78 49'2 ■•• 3723 



March 2 ... 7 56 57 ... 78 44*5 ••• 376o 



„ 4 ... 7 56 21 ... 78 39-9 ... 3780 



6 ... 7 55 48 ... 78 35-3 - 3-801 



„ 8 ... 7 55 18 ... 78 30-8 ... 3-823 



10 ... 7 54 52 ... 78 26-5 ... 3-845 



„ 12 ... 7 54 30 ••• 78 22-3 ... 3-868 



14 ... 7 54 12 ... 78 i8-i ... 3-893 



Mr. W. Godward, of the Nautical Almanac Ofilce, 

 availing himself of the observations of Ceres which have 

 been made at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, at every 

 opposition between 1857 and 1876, has corrected the 

 elements of this, the first discovered of the small planets, 

 and has succeeded in representing its course during the 

 interval of about twenty years, with a precision which we 

 do not remember to have seen attained in any previous 

 investigation of the like nature. The residual errors in 

 R.A. and declination in no case amount to five seconds of 

 arc. Applying the corrections given by Mr. Godward in 

 the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 

 for January last, there result the following doubtless very 

 exact elements of Piazzi's planet for 1878 : — 

 Epoch, 1878, November i6-o G.M.T. 



Mean longitude 47 50 24*5 



Longitude of perihelion , 149 40 57-1 



,, ascending node ... 80 47 43-1 



Inclination 10 37 17-9 



Angle of eccentricity ...'^ 4 30 572 



Mean daily motion 77i"-3iii7 



From M. Eq. 

 of Epoch. 



From the Berlin Circular No. 85, it appears that 

 with the exception of the small planet observed by Prof. 

 Peters on February 6, which proves to be Antigone, the 

 planets lately observed are new. Their numbers and 

 discoverers, with dates of discovery and magnitudes, 

 are : — 



No. 180 ... Perrotin ... Jan. 29 ... 12-om. 



No. 181 ... Cottenot ... Feb. 2 ... lo-om. 



No. 182 ... Palisa ... Feb. 7 ... 10 -5m. 



No. 183 ... Palisa ... Feb. 8 ... i2-om. 



As we anticipated, No. 180 proves to be distinct from 

 Urdtty which remains to be recovered. 



BIOLOGICAL NOTES 



The Origin of the Carbon of Plants.— Mr. J. "W. 

 Moll has made in Prof. Sach's laboratory at Wiirzburg, 

 some researches on this subject during the summer of 

 1876. A detailed account of these, with the conclusions at 

 which he has arrived, is promised in the Landwirth- 

 schaftliche yahrbiicJier von Nathusius und Thiel, but a 

 brief account will be found in the last number of the 

 Archives N^erlandaises, tome xii., 4me livre. A plant 

 with green-coloured cells can, under the influence of light, 

 take the carbon it requires from the atmosphere, releasing 

 in the act of doing so, so much oxygen. This is a fact, too 

 well vouched for by the experiments of Boussingault, 

 Vogel, Rauwenhoff, and Harting, to admit of a doubt, but 

 the quantity of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is very 

 small, and the quantity of carbon stored up during say a 

 summer's growth in some large forest, is very great. 

 Moreover, the roots of such plants are fixed in a soil 

 which is highly charged with carbonaceous products, so 

 the question quite naturally arises, may not the roots take 

 up some of these atoms of carbon ready to their hand ? or 

 may they not at least take up the carbon in the form of 

 carbon dioxide, send this up the green granules in the 

 leaves, and so give them a more abundant supply than 

 they could get from the surrounding air ? Besides, is it 

 not a fact that most plants seem to thrive in a fine rich 

 leaf mould, and may not its richness in carbon be 

 partly the cause ? One of the first questions Mr. Moll set 

 himself to answer was — Can leaves decompose carbon 

 dioxide which is furnished to the root of the stem from 

 which the leaves spring ? Now, starting with assent to 

 Prof Sach's discovery that the starch of the chlorophyll 

 granule is the first visible product of the fixation of some 

 carbon atoms, there was here a ready method of proving 

 whether this were so or not. In the course of several 

 experiments it was contrived that leaves destitute of these 

 starch granules should be in an atmosphere deprived of 

 carbon dioxide, while at the same time they were well 

 exposed to the influence of light. The roots were fixed 

 in moist soil well supplied with carbon dioxide, and the re- 

 sult was that under these circumstances no starch granules 

 were formed ; and in a modification of this experiment, 

 where one portion of a leaf was allowed to be exposed to 

 ordinary air, that portion at once set to forming its starch. 

 Botanists no doubt will welcome the publication of the 

 experiments of which we have now only the brief result ; 

 doubtless more research will end in more discoveries in 

 this most interesting field, for how can one account for 

 the fact that some plants do, as we might say, fatten by 

 feeding on carbon atoms, although these very plants can- 

 not take these atoms when in union with oxygen ? 



Ferns and Mosses. — Hofmeister's work on the 

 " Higher Flowering Plants (Cryptogamia) " is truly indis- 

 pensable to every scientific botanist, and, thanks to Mr. 

 Curry, the English student has it at his command. It 

 commences with an account of a not uncommon little 

 plant called Anthoccros Icevis, and it finishes with an 

 account of those cryptogams very high in rank and vast 

 in size, known to us as cone-bearers, 'and of which the 

 churchyard yew or the giant Wellingtonia may serve as 



