9Q 



NA TURE 



[May 24, 1883 



Academy for that date was in R.A. 308° 25', Decl. -24° 17'. 

 Pingre in his Comltographie mentions that according to Struyck 

 this position is erroneous, and that ten minutes should be added 

 to the declination and five to the right ascension as printed 

 in the Alt-moires, adding that if Lacaille has u-ed the Bologna 

 observation his orbit would be less accurate than that of Struyck. 

 The Bologna observers Manfredi and Stancari found the comet 

 on November 25, in the same field of view of an 8 foot tele- 

 scope, with two stars, the distance between which they estimated 

 at a'. At 7h. 14m. 47s. apparent time the centre of the comet 

 was in the right line joining these stars, and its distance from 

 the northernmost star was one-third of the distance between 

 them. It is easy to see from the rough position given, 

 that the stars in question are Piazzi XX., 296 and 29S, and 

 carrying back his places, we have for the position of the 

 comet referred to the mean equinox of i7o8'o, R.A. 307 49''3, 

 Decl. - 23 44''!. The equation of time was 12m. 37s. sub- 

 tractive from apparent time, and hence the Greenwich mean 

 time of observation was November 25 '26163. The place calcu- 

 lated from Lacaille's orbit, first published in his " Lecons 

 •d'Astronoaiie," differs + 7'"2 in R.A. and + 5'6 in Decl., so 

 that it is evident he did nut u-e the position as erroneously de- 

 duced in the Mhnoires. The agreement of his elements with 

 the Paris observation on December 17 is fairly good ; there is a 

 much larger deviation from the approximate places determined 

 at Bologna, on January 13 and 17; but these observations of 

 Manfredi and Stancari are probably affected with very mate' ial 

 errors, as such is certainly the case with the deduced position 

 for the night of discovery. So far as can be judged from this 

 partial comparison of Lacaille's elements with observation, the 

 hypothesis of identity of the comet of 1707 with that of 1846 is 

 not supported, but the observations of the former may deserve 

 further discussion. 



Tub Transit of Venus. — Prof. C. A. Young has published 

 his observations of all four contacts in the late transit of Venus, 

 made at the Halsted Observatory, Princeton, N.J., with the 

 23-inch equatorial, and a power of 160. At the two internal 

 -contacts the aperture was diminished to 5^ inches, " in order to 

 make the observations comparable as far as possible witli those 

 of the virions government expeditions," but at the external 

 contacts the full aperture was employed ; a polarising helioscope 

 was attached. We hive compared the times given by Prof. 

 Young with those calculated from the reduction equations pub- 

 lished in this column, in the formation of which it was the main 

 object to get geometrical contacts. It has been previously men- 

 tioned that there was a close agreement between prediction and 

 observation in the case of the results obtained at Harvard 

 College, and the following are the small r iflerences (calc.-obs.) 

 for Prof. Young's : — 



I. -16s. ... II. +3s. ... III. -15s. ... IV. -4s. 



The British Association Catalogue of Stars. — We 

 lately remarked, not without some surprise, that a copy of this 

 work was priced in a c nitinental list of second-hand hooks at 

 the high figure of 12/. lor., or about three times the cost at its 

 publication in 1845. Such a fact naturally induces the query, 

 Is there occasion for a new general catalogue of the principal 

 fixed stars, or, say, of stars within the limit of naked-eie vision? 

 It is a question upon which there will probably be a wide differ- 

 ence of opinion, and it is one that it would be of interest to 

 di-cuss. 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES 



The la-t number of the Vcrhandlungcn der Gestllschaft fur 

 Erdkunde of Berlin contains a paper by Prof. Brauns, late of 

 Japan, on the Island of Yezo. The writer agrees with Mr. 

 Keane and other ethnologists that the Ainos are a totally 

 •different race from the Japanese. The number of these people 

 in Yezo and the Kuriles is given by the Japanese Govern- 

 ment as 18,000, but many authors place the number as high as 

 50,000. In Saghalin there are Io,O0Oto 12,000, and if th. se in 

 the southern part of Kamschatka who are living under Kus ian 

 rule are included, the total number of the race would probably 

 be from 60,000 to 70,000. In the same issue the indefatigable 

 explorer of the Philippines, Heir Jagor, describes briefly a 

 recent journey through Luzon. An interesting communication 

 also is a list of the pipers published by the Geographical Society 

 of Tokio in its volume for 1880. This Society is composed, we 

 believe, almost wholly of natives, and its pnpers are printed in 



Japanese. There appear to have been in all thirty-eight com- 

 munications of one kind or another ; the writers or translators 

 (for some of the papers are apparently translations from others 

 in European languages) are in all cases Japanese. Among the 

 papers are several on the history and geography of Okinawa, as 

 the Japanese call the Lo^choo group ; the climate of Peking; 

 Japane-e intercourse with foreign countries in the middle ages ; 

 a journey to Vladivostock ; the history of geography in Japan ; 

 history and geography of Persia by a Japane-e who had tra- 

 velled through the country ; description of Au-tralia ; descrip- 

 ti >n of a voyage in the Persian Gulf ; of a journey on the Khirgiz 

 steppes ; ancient Japanese geographical names ; description of 

 Saghalin ; on the ahsence of precious stones in Japan, &c, &c. 

 Some of these papers would hardly meet with a favourable re- 

 ception from the Council of the Royal Geographical Society ; 

 but in Japan they are listened to and read afterwards in their 

 printed form by hundreds of people who have never left their 

 own country, and who possess but a very small geographical 

 literature. When this is remembered, the list will appear not only 

 a creditable one to the travellers, but also a most useful one for 

 the spread of geographical knowledge in Japan, which after all 

 is the purpose of the Society. 



The annual report of Mr. Tremlett, the British Consul at 

 Saigon, contains some interesting geographical information 

 ab 'lit the northern and less known districts of the Indo-Chinese 

 peninsula. The governor of Cochin China sent out an expe- 

 dition to expl ire the country between the Meikong and Annam 

 at about 14'' latitude. The party left Peamchileng, on the 

 Meikong, proceeding eastward. After pa-sing the river valley 

 the country became hilly and wooded, intersected with numerous 

 watercourses. No difficulty was experienced until the arrival of 

 the travellers nearthe Cambodi in frontiers. As they proceeded the 

 hostility of the people became yet more pronounced, and finally 

 their passage towards Annam was closed altogether. They were 

 finally compelled to retreat, losing ad their baggage on the way, 

 and after three months' absence they reached a friendly post. 

 The Mois inhabit the wilds between Cambodia, Siam, Burmah, 

 and China. Commerce, properly speaking, does not exist 

 among them, and traffic is carried on by exchanges. The 

 various roads and river are stopped up by the people themselves 

 to prevent the pa-sage of pillagers and enemies ; as a result the 

 people are very backward. Money is almost unknown or un- 

 appreciated among them. A native who will not work for a 

 dollar a day will do so for a bell costing a few cents. The 

 articles most valued by the Mois are buffaloes, red and while 

 cottonade-, glass ware, brass wire, utensils, salt, and salt fish. 



From the same report we learn that an exploration of the 

 upper waters of the Saigon river by Lieut. Gauthier shows that 

 previous charts are incorrect ; the names given in them being 

 imaginary. There appears to have exi-ted in this region in former 

 times one or more states in an advanced stage of civilisation, as 

 may be seen by ruins still remaining, probably offshoots of the 

 famous Angker Wat. The present race of Mois claim no descent 

 from their predecessors on the soil, and indeed it would be diffi- 

 cult to find a lower stale than theirs. It is difficult to communi- 

 cate with them, as the language is not easily picked up by the 

 Annamites. They appear to be in a state of independence, 

 paying no tribute to any of their neighbours, although the King 

 of Cambodia is their nominal suzerain. The report concludes 

 by saying that the French Government will have to send a much 

 more serious expedition if anything is to he learned about these 

 regions ; two or three men can learn nothing. 



THE great attention which France has given for many years 

 past to the Indo-Chinese peninsula is shown by a return printed 

 in the Proceedings of the Soeiitl Aeadimique tndo-Chinoise of all 



the scientific expeditions despatched by the French Government 

 to this region. The^e embrace archaeological, ethnological, 

 geographical, and other scientific objects, and up to 1SS1 they 

 were seventy seven in number. They c mmence as far back as 

 1680, when the Jesuit Pallu visited the courts of Tonkin and 

 Annam. Seventeen of these took place before the military 

 occupation of any part of G chin China by the French; thirty. 

 three were sent by the Ministry of Public Instruction, chiefly for 

 archaeological purposes, while the remaining twenty-seven were 

 sent by the Ministry of Marine and the Colonies, and were de- 

 voted principally to exploration. To understand the mass of 

 scientific work done by the French in Indo-China, it must be 

 remembered that these seventy-seven expeditions do not include 

 the innumerable journeys and researches of the missionaries, 



