254 
With regard to the weather, which of course was a very im- 
portant element, the sky was perfectly clear, and altogether 
suitable for the purpose of observation. There was a light 
south-east wind blowing, and this prevented the definition being 
so steady as might have been wished. We are ‘ officially” 
assured, however, that on the whole the observations made at 
the Cape of Good Hope may be regarded as perfectly satisfac- 
tory, and that they will add considerably towards the solution of 
the problem of the sun’s exact distance from the earth. We 
have already intimated that at the suggestion of Dr. Gill, other 
stations than that of the Observatory had been selected. At 
Aberdeen Road, Mr. Finlay (of comet fame), the first Assistant 
at the Cape Observatory, and Mr. Pette, third Assistant, were 
provided with an equatorial of six inches aperture, and the 
report received last evening by telegraph, was that complete 
success had attended their labours. Mr. Marth, the well-known 
astronomer, was detailed at Montagu Road in charge of one of 
the British Transit of Venus Expeditions, and was provided 
with a 6-inch aperture equatorial, his assistant, Mr. Stephen, 
formerly of the Observatory, and now of the Treasury Depart- 
ment, Cape Town, being provided with a 44-inch equatorial. 
In his report last evening, Mr. Marth states that the sky was 
cloudless, but a heavy dust-storm prevailed during the day. He 
reported, however, that the important internal contact was 
observed satisfactorily both by himself and Mr. Stephen. A 
report from Capt. Skead, in conjunction with Mr. Spindler, 
of Port Elizabetb, states that they also obtained satisfactory 
observations, 
We fear that the courtesy of the General Manager of Tele- 
graphs, Mr. Sivewright, must have been sorely tested by the 
frequent demand upon his staff for signals for the purpoce of 
determining longitudes, &c. The telegraphic department, we 
ought to state, has given the utmost facilities in connection with 
these operations, and thanks to the co-operation of the General 
Manager, everything connected with his department was accom- 
plished without a hitch. The transit of Venus expedition will 
indeed be indebted to Mr. Sivewright for his energy and devo- 
tion in their interests. This additional work has necessarily 
fallen heavily upon the shoulders of the staff at the Observatory. 
Not only has the normal work of that establi-hment been 
carried on as diligently as heretofore, but there has been the 
additional task of taking observations of the great comet, which 
with other things has told severely upon the endurance of Dr, 
Gill and his assistants, Judging, though, from what we saw 
there yesterday, there is no sign of anyone breaking down under 
the strain of extra work, 
The signals for time comparison were sent to the observers 
engaged in the transit about aine o’clock on Tuesday evening 
The night is described as having been beautifully clear, aud the 
occultation of the bright star Spica Virginus was observed in 
the early morning. Signals were also sent to Mr. Eddie, 
Graham’s Town. 
We have thus far briefly sketched the manner in which the 
observations were taken yesterday—excepting the somewhat 
primitive methoi of smoked glass adopted by a good many of 
the general public, to whom the transit of Venus was not quite 
such a matter of exquisite nicety as to such gentlemen as those 
to whom we have just alluded. From a non-astronomic point 
of view there was even with the aid of the proper instruments, 
only to be seen a dark spot crossing the sun, resembling very 
much a Wimbledon bull’s eye. Roughly speaking, the planet 
made its external contact at five minutes past three o’clock, 
when through a proper instrument it might have been seen 
minutely notching into the sun’s edge. At twenty-five minutes 
past the hour—still roughly speaking, for when the calculations 
are worked out there might be a fractional part of a second one 
way or the other—the internal contact occurred. 
The sun set long before the transit had been completed. It 
consequently fell to the lot of other astronomers to observe its 
egress, which of course was as eagerly watched for as had been 
that of the ingress. The ingress, it might be interesting to men- 
tion, was visible in North and South America ; Europe, except- 
ing the west of Russia and the north of Norway and Sweden ; 
the whole of Africa, Madagascar, Seychelles, and the Mauritius. 
The egress was visible in North and South America, Australia, 
New Zealand, and nearly the whole of the South Pacific. This 
egress will have heen completed by about eight o’clock this 
morning, and then all interested in the subject of Venus may 
look forward to another 122 years before the interesting occur- 
rence again takes place. 
NATURE 
[ Fan. 11, 1883 
ELECTRIC RAILWAYS? 
E have grown so accustomed to the regular announcement— 
““serlous—accident on such and such a railway, several 
passengers injured”’ that we have almost come to regard railway 
accidents as inevitable, just as parents mistakingly think the 
measles and whooping cough necessary accompaniments of child- 
hood. But speed no more means disaster than a densely 
crowded city means disease. The first effect of overcrowding 
is undoubtedly to produce fever and othercomplaints. If, how- 
ever, the knowledge and practice of the laws of hygiene increase 
more rapidly than the population of a town, the death-rate, as 
we have seen, diminishes, instead of augmenting. And so it is 
with locomotion ; the stage-coach journeys of our ancestors were 
slow enough for the most staunch conservative, and yet the per- 
centage of the pas-engers injured on their journeys was far 
greater than even now with our harum-scarum railway travelling. 
The number of passengers has increased enormously, but the 
safety has increased in an even greater rate. If then we can 
devise methods introducing still greater security, a far larger 
number of passengers may travel at a far greater speed and with 
less fear of danger than at present. 
Accidents constitute one charge against railway conveyance, 
but there is another, and that is the cost. Cheap as railway 
travelling now is, compared with the departed stage-coach loco- 
motion, the price of the tickets is still far too high for railways 
to fulfil, even in a small degree, one of their must important 
functions, and that is transporting labourers from parts of the 
coun'ry where labour is scarce, to others where it is abundant 
and labourers in demand. 
But how is a happier state of things to te realised? We 
cannot expect the railway companies to lower their fares merely 
to benefit humanity. If, h :wever, we can prove to them that 
the present system of railways is neither the most remunerative 
to themselves nor the most beneficial to the community at large, 
we may hope to win the attention of railway directors, whose 
stock question is, and quite rightly, ‘‘ Will it pay ?” 
Those of you who have read the life of Stephenson know 
what a protracted fight he had to carry one of his most cherished 
ideas, and that was the employment of a locomotive engine to 
draw the train, instead of a stationary engine to pull it with 
ropes or chains. His adversaries saw the disadvantage of ad ling 
the weight of the locomotive to the weight of the train, whereas 
Stephenson was especially struck with the enormous waste of 
power in the friction of ropes or chains passing over pulleys. 
[Experiments were then shown proving, frst, that the mass of 
the locomotive necessitated the engine having a greater horse- 
power to get up the speed of the train quickly as well as a 
greater horse-power to keep up the speed; secondly, that the 
friction and wear and tear of ropes, such as were employed 
on the London and Blackwall Railway, would have been an 
insuperable hindrance to the development of railways.] From 
this was deduced that, since in Stephenson’s day the only feasible 
mode of communicating the power of a stationary engine to a 
moving train was by means of ropes, his decision to adopt the 
locomotive was perfectly correct at the time it was made. 
Attempts have heen made to propel trains by blowing them 
through tubes, or by blowing a piston attached to the train 
through a tube, but such attempts at pneumatic railways have 
nearly all been abandcned. The employment of air compressed 
into a receiver on the train by fixed pumping engines stationed at 
various points along the line, and employed to work compressed 
air engines on the carriages has been effected with considerable 
suecess by Col. Beaumont, especially for tram-lines. The 
weight of the compressed air-engine is, however, still very con- 
siderable. Any system of pumping water through a pipe and 
employing the water to work a hydraulic engine on the train is 
hardly worth considering, seeing that the mechanical difficulties 
of keeping up a continuous connection between the moving 
train and the main through which the water is pumped seem 
insuperable. Gas-engines worked with ordin.ry coal-gas, stored 
perhaps under pressure, might be employed on the moving train, 
but the advantage arising from the absence of bviler and coal 
would be more than compensated for by the fact, that the weight 
of a gas-engine per horse-power developed is so much greater 
than that of a steam-engine. None of these systems, then, of 
dispensing with a locomotive is by any means perfect, and the 
success of the recent experiments on the electric transmission of 
* Abstract of a lecture at the Royal Institution by Prof W. E. Ayrton, 
F.R.S. 
