154 



NA TURE 



\June 14, 1883 



of sixty miles, by an iceberg or a glacier in the great 

 Ice Age ; and the ground around it is to be inclosed, 

 turfed, planted, and set with rustic seats. A fine day, 

 and the novel proceeding, drew a large and attentive 

 crowd ; a short, bright service was conducted with the 

 aid of an unusually good village choir ; and the big stone 

 set up by Joshua at Shechem formed the text for a sermon 

 intended to stamp the boulder as a religious no less than 

 a scientific monument. 



This cha-ming little idyll is the closing chapter in a 

 story which might claim to share the title made historic 

 by a great geologist. Five years ago the present rector, 

 coming to Stockton, found the boulder lying in a ditch, 

 into which it had been rolled from its inconvenient posi- 

 tion by the roadside. A hazy clerical belief that it was 

 " Druidic " had saved it from complete destruction ; but 

 it was the cockshy of all the children, bonfires were 

 lighted on it occasionally, and it lay at the mercy of every 

 field club which might come hammering that way. Large, 

 glaciated, and of granite, it was clearly worth preserving. 

 The new rector told its probable history from the pulpit, 

 and the village mind was roused. Reports came in of 

 other big stones far and near, some of which were also 

 of glacial origin ; the quarrymen in the adjoining lime- 

 works, digging down to a smaller piece of granite and 

 some beautifully striated blocks of sandstone, protected 

 instead of breaking them ; and by following up the 

 hint thus given, a fine bed of boulder clay was un- 

 covered, shown to Dr. Crosskey, and inserted in the 

 Boulder Committee Report of the British Association. 

 The fame of the great stone spread ; visitors came to see 

 it ; the Stocktonians, who had through frequent lectures 

 learnt its scientific value, became proud of their " Pibble" 

 and of their ability to instruct their neighbours; the sub- 

 scription point was reached, and money found to move 

 andrcilin the treasure ; the surrounding villages finally 

 emptied themselves to attend the consecration service, 

 and Stockton is at this moment, like douce Davie Deans, 

 "as uplifted as a midden-cock on pattens." 



The moral of the story is twofold. First : what has 

 been done in Stockton ought to be done in scores of other 

 villages. This boulder was the first link in a chain of 

 evidence, lengthening ever since, in favour of a new and 

 pregnant probability, the current of an ice-sheet from the 

 Charnwood Fore-t heights across the table-land of South 

 Warwickshire. In countless corners more lie similar 

 monuments, unknown and doomed, which, if thus pre- 

 served and studied, would afford the keys to like problems 

 in geology. And secondly : the clergy ought to do it. 

 Our country parsons are, if they could be educated to see 

 it, the natural discoverers and conservators of local relics ; 

 with the opportunities they have and the attainments they 

 ought to possess, they might in their mere leisure write 

 such a scientific history of England as no country has yet 

 possessed. Let them read the delightful chapter in Lc 

 Maudit, which paints the Curd Julio in his Pyrenean 

 parish, and in order that they may be qualified to imitate 

 him, let the bishops be wise in their generation, and exact 

 a knowledge of some branch of natural history from 

 every candidate for I rders. 



REPORT OF THE PARIS OBSERVATORY FOR 

 THE YEAR 1882 



WE have received from Admiral Mouchez, the Director 

 of the Paris Observatory, the report on the state of 

 that Observatory for the past year, and as we recently 

 made reference to the state of our own Greenwich Ob- 

 servatory on the occasion of the visitation which took 

 place at the beginning of the present month, we think it 

 may interest our readers if we make a few extracts from 

 this report of Admiral Mouchez. 



The report opens with a complaint that the service of 

 the Observatory has been very considerably deranged by 



the preparations for the transit of Venus. Not only did 

 the various members of the expedition attend at the Ob- 

 servatory in order to be trained either in photography or in 

 the u-e of the artificial transit, but no less than five of the 

 personnel of the Observatory themselves took part in the 

 work. At the same time, says Admiral Mouchez, the 

 past year may take rank with any of its predecessors 

 when the increased work of the Observatory is taken into 

 account, for during this time an extension of ground 

 has taken place, the equatorial coude - has been installed, 

 and several underground chambers have been constructed 

 for the purpose of stud\ing magnetism and terrestrial 

 physics generally. Curiously enough, one of the grounds 

 on which the addition of magnetical studies to the work 

 of the Ubservatory is urged is, that the cloudy skies of 

 Paris so frequently interrupt the purely astronomical ob- 

 servations, that, without some such work as it is now pro- 

 posed to add, the observers would frequently have little 

 to do. 



Among ihe purely astronomical work of the Observa- 

 tory which has been going on for the last four years is 

 that of the revision of Lalande's catalogue of stars, num- 

 bering 40,000. Concerning this work, we are informed 

 that the General Catalogue, which will form eight 

 volumes in quarto, is well in hand, and it is hoped that 

 two volumes will be published each year, or at all events 

 four volumes during the next three years. To assist in 

 the construction of the catalogue, 1 to,ooo meridian ob- 

 servations have been made during the last four years. 



The employment of ordinary equatorials in an obser- 

 vatory, remarks Admiral Mouchez, necessitates a con- 

 tinual change of position of the observer, he being 

 compelled to follow the movement of the eyepiece into 

 positions which are often inconvenient and fatiguing, 

 whilst the heavy dome of the observatory has also to be 

 constantly rotated to follow the motion of the telescope. 

 In order to obviate the necessity for this, M. Liewy con- 

 ceived the idea of adapting to the equatorial the system 

 of "lunette brisde," employed first in England, and after- 

 wards to a greater extent in Germany, especially in small 

 transit instruments. 



The new coude equatorial may be thus described : — The 

 polar axis of the instrument is supported at its extremi- 

 ties on two pillars like a meridian instrument. Round 

 this axis the telescope turns, forming a right angle at the 

 lower support. By means of a mirror placed at the sum- 

 mit of this angle the light is reflected along the pierced 

 axis, at the end of which the eyepiece or the micrometer 

 is placed. Under these conditions, with the telescope at 

 rest, the equatorial stars pass across the observer's field 

 of view. But of course the telescope must not be limited 

 to the observation of equatorial stars. In order to secure 

 the observation of other stars, a mirror free to rotate 

 is placed before the object-glass and connected with the 

 declination circle. The inclination of this mirror may 

 be changed so as to throw the light coming from a star 

 of any declination into the tube. This arrangement 

 therefore permits the observer to explore every part of 

 the heavens without quitting his position at one end of 

 the polar axis. The telescope may, practically, by a 

 rotation of this axis, be directed towards any part of the 

 celestial equator, whilst a star of any declination may 

 be made to throw its light down the broken telescope 

 by means of the external mirror. It might be imagined 

 that in this latter case the double reflection would result 

 in the loss of a good deal of light, but we read that the 

 preliminary experiments have shown that this is not the 

 case, and that the polish and figure of the mirrors are 

 very satisfactory. They are silvered, and of course can 

 be easily repohshed. We should add that this instru- 

 mei t, now one of the actualities of the Observatory, is 

 due to the liberality of Mr. Bischoffsheim. 



With regard to more strictly physical observations, 

 those who have made their complaint respecting the 



