July 30, 1903] 



NATURE 



305 



has, up to the present, been a decided success. There are, 

 however, a number of mammals, inclusive of the bighorn 

 sheep, the true blacktail deer, the mule-deer, the moose, 

 (the white goat, and the grizzly bear — all more or less in 

 danger of extermination — which have not yet been estab- 

 lished in refuges of their own. This, it is said, is largely due 

 to lack of funds ; and the author points out that if the 

 -Alaskan brown bear — the largest living member of its kind 

 — be not soon established in the gardens, it will be too late. 

 Many interesting traits in the habits of American mammals 

 ^re recorded, notably the fact that the prongbuck expands 

 «he hairs of its white rump-patch in a disc-like manner when 

 alarmed, after the fashion of the Japanese and Peking deer, 

 the white patch, when thus expanded, forming a conspicuous 

 "" recognition mark." 



Messrs. Watts and Co. have issued for the Rationalist 

 Press Association, Ltd., a sixpenny edition of a selection 

 ■of Tyndall's lectures and essays from " Fragments of 

 Science." The famous British Association address at 

 Belfast in 1874 is included, and also the biographical sketch 

 of Tyndall in the " Dictionary of National Biography." 



Since its publication in 1881, Mr. W. Robinson's de- 

 lightful book on " The Wild Garden " has been the means 

 of introducing many lovers of plants to new and beautiful 

 aspects of vegetation obtained by placing hardy exotic 

 iplants under conditions where they will thrive without 

 further care. The fifth edition has just been issued by 

 Mr. John Murray, and will appeal to a larger circle of 

 readers than that which derived ideas from the original 

 •work. The illustrations are all woodcuts by Mr. Alfred 

 Parsons. 



The first part of the fifteenth volume of the Proceedings 

 of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, a copy of which 

 has been received, deals with the work of the session 1901- 

 1902. In addition to the opening address by Dr. David 

 Hepburn, vice-president of the society, on some morpho- 

 Bogical evidences of the evolution of man, the volume con- 

 tains, amongst others, papers by Mr. Goodchild on the 

 origin of rock-salt and on observations upon the bathy- 

 metrical distribution of reef-building corals, and one by Dr. 

 Munro on the prehistoric horses of Europe and their sup- 

 posed domestication in Palaeolithic times. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during 

 ithe past week include a Sooty Mangabey {Cercocebus 

 ,fuliginosus) from West Africa, presented by Mrs. Watkins ; 

 a Ring-tailed Lemur {Lemur catta) from Madagascar, pre- 

 sented by Mr. H. P. Jaques ; a Suricate {Suricata tetra- 

 ^actyla) from South Africa, presented by Captain C. P. 

 Harvey ; two Kinkajous {Cercoleptes caudivolvulus) from 

 South America, presented by Miss C. Wallace Dunlop ; a 

 Himalayan Whistling Thrush {Myiophoneus temmincki), 

 •a Blue-winged Siva (Siva cyanouroptera), a Lesser Blue- 

 winged Pitta {Pitta cyanoptera) from the Himalayas, pre- 

 sented by Mr. E. W. Harper; a Cardinal Grosbeak 

 ^Cardinalis virginianus) from North America, presented by 

 Mrs. F. S. Stevenson ; a Greek Tortoise {Testudo graeca), 

 European, presented by Mrs. F. Bailey ; two Wanderoo 

 Monkeys {Macacus silenus) from Malabar, a Common 

 'Crowned Pigeon {Goura coronata), a Sclater's Crowned 

 Pigeon {Goura sclateri) from New Guinea, a White- 

 'throated Ground Thrush {Gcocichla cyanonotus), a 

 Bengal Pitta {Pitta bengalensis), two Indian Rollers 

 riracias indica), three Pond Herons {Ardeola grayi), five 

 arlet-backed Flower-peckers {Dicaeum cruentatum), two 

 Iwo-banded Monitors {Varanus salvator) from India, 

 <deposited. 



NO. 1 76 1, VOL. 68] 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN. 



Astronomical Occurrences in August :— 

 August 2. 8h. im. to iih. 501. Transit of Jupiter's Sat. III. 

 (Ganymede). 



8. I3h. lom. to I5h. $6x0. Transit of Jupiter's 



Sat. IV. (Callisto). 



9. iih. 27m. to I4h. 32m. Transit of Jupiter's 



Sat. III. (Ganymede). 

 10-13. Epoch of the great Perseid meteoric shower 

 (Radiint point 45° + 57°). 



12. iih. Venus at maximum brilliancy. 



13. loh. 54m. Minimum of Algol (/3 Persei). 



15. Venus. Illuminated portion of disc =o'236; of 



Mars = 0-877. 



16. I4h. 50m. to I7h. 54m. Transit of Jupiter's Sat. 



IV. (Callisto). 

 19. i3h. i6m. to I3h. 46m. Moon occalts X Gemi- 

 norum (Mag. 3 •6). 



28. Perihelion Passage of Borrelly's comet (1903 c). 



29. Mars 1^° south of a Librae (mag. 2 '9). 



Photographs of Comet 1902 b. — Prof. R. H. Curtiss 

 reproduces on their original scale, and minutely describes, 

 some excellent photographs of Perrine's comet (1902 b) in 

 the Lick Observatory Bulletin, No. 42. 



The photographs were secured with the Pierson camera, 

 which has a Dallmeyer objective of 15cm. aperture and 

 82-6cm. focal length, the Floyd telescope of 12cm. aperture 

 and 20ocm. focus serving as a guiding telescope. The nine 

 photographs reproduced show very clearly the remarkable 

 changes which took place in the size and form of the 

 comet's tail. 



The New Observatory for Buluwayo. — The Buluwayo 

 Observer for March 21 gives an interesting account of the 

 new observatory which i§ being founded in that city by the 

 Jesuit mission. 



Father Goetz, who obtained brilliant successes at the 

 Paris University, and for eighteen months has been work- 

 ing at the Georgetown (U.S.A.) Observatory, has been 

 appointed director, and has taken with him a fairly complete 

 outfit of instruments for magnetic and meteorological 

 observations. It is proposed that, as the work progresses, 

 other instruments for astronomical work shall be added, 

 and part of the programme for the new observatory is to 

 undertake the mapping and cataloguing of variable stars 

 in the southern hemisphere on similar lines to those 

 followed at Georgetown for the northern variables. For 

 this purpose the mission negotiated for the loan of an 

 equatorial telescope from the Carnegie Institution, but the 

 negotiations have not yet been successful. 



The Chartered Company has given two blocks of land 

 for the observatory site, and the Government has granted 

 assistance in the erection of the necessary buildings 

 {Zambesi Mission Record, July). 



The System of e HvoRiE. — In No. 36 of the Lick Observ- 

 atory Bulletin Prof. Aitken gives the details of, and dis- 

 cusses, his observations of the binary system e Hydrae, 

 which, since its discovery by Schiaparelli in 1888, has been 

 observed to possess a rapid motion. The various observ- 

 ations, except those made at Greenwich, are satisfactorily 

 represented by an ellipse having the following approximate 

 elements : — 



T=i9oir, P = i5-7 years, 6 = 0-685, o=o''-24. 

 a = iog''s, t=3SS. X = 2647, n = + 22-293. 



The components differ fully two magnitudes in brightness, 

 and their maximum separation is only o'^s. 



There is a third star at a distance of 3' forming, with 

 the close double, the double star 2 1273, and the observ- 

 ations show that together they form a ternary system, whilst 

 the spectrograms obtained with the Mills spectrograph, and 

 measured by Dr. H. D. Curtis, show that this third star 

 has a line of sight velocity varying from -f-45-2 on November 

 2802, 1899 (G.M.T.), to +2'9i on November 706, 1901, 

 and that the visual and spectrographic binary systems are 

 identical. If this is correct the spectrum observations 

 should show a slow increase in the velocity of recession for 

 the next year or two, and then a nearly uniform velocity 

 until 1912. 



