42. 



NATURE 



[Nov. 



Comets Fa ye and Barnard.— The following ephemerides 

 for these objects for Berlin midnight are in continuation of 

 those given in Nature, vol. xxxviii. p. 626 : — 



ComEt i888rf(Faye). 



Nov. 



R.A. 

 h. ni. s. 

 869 



8 7 39 

 8 8 59 

 8 10 II 

 8 II 15 

 8 12 9 

 8 12 56 

 8 13 34 



Decl. 



5 49 9 N. 

 5 27-6 

 5 5-6 

 4 44"i 

 4 22-9 

 4 2-4 

 3 42-4 

 3 231 N. 



Co-net ] 

 R.A. 



h. m. 



i e (Barnard). 

 Decl. 



... o 24-4 S. 



■•• I 5"4 

 ... I 467 

 ... 2 27-5 



••• 3 7-4 



••• 3 457 



4 21 9 



30 32 

 17 59 

 4 55 

 51 26 



37 39 

 23 43 

 9 45 

 55 56 ... 4 55-38. 



E. Barnard, Lick 



Nov. 

 13 • 

 17 • 



Venus at greatest distance from the Sun. 

 Mercury at greatest elongation from the Su 

 19° east. 



Meteor-Showtrs. 

 The principal periodic shower of the week is that of the 

 Leonids, max. Novem'^er \\, radiant R.A. 149°, Decl. 22° N. ; 

 but no great display is to be expected this year or for several 

 years to come. Other showers are as follows : — 



From Lynx 125 ... 40 N. 



Near I UrscE Majoris ... 165 ... 30 N. 



Swift ; streaks. 



Discovery of a New Comet. — Mr. E. 

 Observatoiy, Mount Hamilton, discovered a new comet on 

 October 30 (local time). Place at October 31 -0399 G. M.T., 

 R.A. 9h. 43m. 22'2s. ; Decl. 15° 18' 52" S. Daily motion, 

 R.A. + im. 32s. ; Decl. 9' n. Physical appearance : slightly 

 elongated ; i' in diameter ; nth magnitude, or fainter; strong 

 central condensation. 



ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA FOR THE 

 WEEK 1888 NOVEMBER 11-17. 



/TpOR the reckoning of time the civil day, commencing at 



Greenwich mean midnight, counting the hours on to 24, j 

 is here employed.) I 



At Greenwich on Noveinher 1 1 i 



Sunrises, 7h. 14m. ; souths, iih. 44m. I3"2s. ; sets. 16I1. 14m. : ] 

 right asc. on meridian, I5h. 8'4m. ; decl. 17° 38' S. Sidereal : 

 Time at Sunset, igh. 39m. i 



Moon (at First Quarter November 10, i6h.) rises, I4h. 7m. ; souths I 

 I9h. cm.; sets, oh. 2m.*: right asc. on meridian, 22h. 25 "Sm.; 1 

 decl. 13° 20' S. 



Planet. 



Mercury. 



Venus 



Mars 



Jupiter... 

 Saturn . . . 

 Uranus .. 

 Neptune. 

 Indicate 



R'.ses. 

 h. m. 



5 27 



10 13 



11 50 



9 10 

 22 41* 



4 22 

 16 51* 



Souths, 

 h. m. 

 10 39 



13 57 

 15 38 

 13 14 

 6 7 



9 49 

 o 36 



Sets, 

 h. m. 

 15 51 

 17 41 

 19 26 

 17 18 



13 33 

 15 16 

 8 21 



Right asc. and declination 

 on meridian, 

 h. m. n / 



14 26 



17 217 

 19 3-0 

 16 39-0 



9 30"8 

 13 132 

 3 57-9 



10 10 S. 



24 35 S. 

 24 1 1 S. 

 21 41 S. 

 15 41 N. 

 7 6S. 

 18 44 N. 



that the rising is that of the preceding evening and the setting 



that of the following morning 



Occultations of Stars by the Moon (visible at Greenwich). 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



The great Constantine Medal v.as awarded this year by the 

 Russian Geographical Society to Prof. Romanovsky for his 

 geological work in Russian Turkestan. For more than five 

 years the learned Professor explored various parts of Turkestan, 

 and thus laid the first foundations for the geological knowledge 

 of this region. His first work, " Materials for the Geology of 

 Turkestan," was published in 1876, and it contained the 

 description of eighty-eight species of fossil animals (of which 

 thirty-four were new species) and fourteen species of plants 

 belonging to the Carboniferous, Triassic, Jurassic, and Chalk 

 d, posits of Turke.stan ; the Silurian and Devonian deposits of 

 the region being so greatly metamorphosed as to have most of 

 their fossils destroyed. This first work was soon followed by 

 papers contributed to the Verhandhingen of the St. Petersburg 

 Mineralogical Society, in which papers Prof. Romanovsky 

 described the fossils of the Ferghana deposits (Upper Chalk, 

 characterized by their richness in Ostrea, some of which belong 

 to new genera), and the Sarvadan brown-coals, which contain the 

 new lizard Brjiitozoum tianschanicum, and are of the same age 

 as the Connecticut Trias Sandstone. The second part of the 

 "Materials for the Geology of Turkestan," published by Prof 

 Romanovsky, contains the description of all the palzcontological 

 collections gathered in Turkestan by MM. Mushketoff, Syevert- 

 soff, Barbot-de-Marny, and Okladnykh ; and no less than 144 

 species of fossils (of which forty-nine are new) have been described 

 in thissecondinstalment of the "Materials." It was precisely the 

 palaeontological work of Prof. Romanovsky which enabled M. 

 Mushketoff to arrive at the remarkable general conclusions as to 

 the great features of the geology of Turkestan, which are em- 

 bodied in his capital work, "Turkestan," and which rendered 

 it possible for both geologists to draw up the geological map 

 which illustrates it. 



At the same sitting the great medal of Count Liitke was 

 awarded to Tn. P. Koppen for his work in botanical and 

 zoological geography. His work on the distribution of Conifers 

 in Russia, published in 1885, is a:i exhaustive inquiry into the 

 subject, and his nu nerous monographs on the distribution of 

 insects in Russia, as well as of the squirrel and the stag, as also 

 his monographs about the Siberian cedar, the Scotch fir, the 

 larch, ihe-Junipcnts, and so on, are most valuable contributions 

 to the botanical and zoDlogical geography of Russia ; while his 

 last work on the birth-places of the Indo-Europeans and the 

 Finns and Ugrians (published in the Russian Journal of the 

 Ministry of Public Education for 1886), although made in a new 

 direction, is an important contribution to this much debated 

 subject. Large gold medals were awarded to Prof. M. M. 

 Kovalevsky for his "Modern Customs and Old Law: the 

 Customary Law of the Ossetes " ; to Prof Vs. Th. Miller for 

 his ' ■ Ossetian .Studies " ; and to M. Pirogoff for a statistical 

 work about Kostroma. A small gold medal was awarded to 

 L. P. Zagursky, to whom the ethnography of the Caucasus is 

 indebted for so many valuable works, and all ethnographers will 

 be grateful for his endeavours to save from oblivion and to con- 

 tinue the works of Baron Uslar, which undoubtedly are the 

 most serious researches ever made into the slu-ly of Cau- 

 casian languages. Gold medals were also awarded to A. S. 

 Vilkitzky for his determinations of the length of pendulum on 

 Novaya Zemlya and at Archangelsk ; to N. Y. Dinnik for ex- 

 plorations in Northern Caucasia ; and to D. Bulgakovsky for a 

 manuscript work on the inhabitants of the Pinsk marshy tracts. 

 Nineteen silver medals were awarded for various geographical 

 works of less importance. 



