ON THX HMTORT OF ASTnONOMT. €03 



their share of the labour. The observations of the transit of Venus were 

 twice made in the south seas by British navigators, whom the munificence of 

 our present sovereign enabled to undertake so arduous a voyage for this 

 express purpose; and we are indebted to the fund which was granted on the 

 occasion, as well as to the zeal of the Astronomer Royal, for the experiments 

 on the attraction of mounfeiins, which -wete instituted jifter their return. In 

 this country also. Dr. Herschel, besides many other important additions to 

 our astronomical knowledge, has discovered a primary planet, and eight 

 secondary ones, unknown before. The astronomers of Sicily and Germany 

 h&ve, however, the honaur of the first discovery of tlie three humbler mem- 

 bers of the solar system which have been last introduced to our acquaintance, 

 Ceres by Piazzi, Pallas by Gibers, and Juno by Harding: and the mathe- 

 maticians of France have excelled all their predecessors in the elaborate and 

 refined application of the theory of gravitation, to the investigation of the 

 Djost minute and intricate details of the celestial motions. 



