252 



NATURE 



SJuly 30, 1874 



ANOTHER NEW COMET. 



THE following letter from Mr. J. R. Hind, dated Mr. 

 Bishop's Observatory, Twickenham, July 27, appeared 

 in Tuesday's Times : — 



" M. Stephan, Director of the Observatory at Mar- 

 seilles, notified to us by telegram yesterday the discovery 

 of a comet on the previous night by M. Borrelly, a col- 

 league of M. Coggia (to whom is due the first detection of 

 the bright comet which we have just lost), at that Obser- 

 vatory. The position at 2 A.M. on the 26th inst. appears 

 to have been close to the star Theta, in the constellation 

 Draco, in right ascension 238 deg. 4 min., and polar dis- 

 tance 30 deg. 28 min. The comet is pretty bright, and its 

 motion towards the west. Clouds have prevented any 

 observation at Twickenham during the past night. 



" A communication from Berlin this morning mentions 

 — contrary to what I should yet have expected from my 

 own calculations relating to the orbit — that Dr. Tietjen, of 

 the Imperial Observatory, has found indications of a 

 sensible deviation from parabolic motion in the recent 

 bright comet between April 19 and July 14. The curve is 

 elliptical, but the inferred period of revolution is of such 

 length as to be open at present to uncertainty, which can 

 only be removed by observations in the other hemisphere. 

 The semi-axis major is found to be rather more than 430 

 times the earth's mean distance from the sun, and the 

 corresponding length of revolution is nearly 9,000 years. 



" The tail of the late comet increased very quickly and 

 considerably in length, as frequently happens soon after 

 perihelion passage. Assuming it to have proceeded from 

 the nucleus very nearly in the direction opposite to that 

 of the sun, its actual length had increased from 4,000,000 

 miles on July 3 to i6,oco,ooo on the 13th, and on the 19th, 

 the last night it was visible in this hemisphere, to some- 

 thing over 25,000,000 miles. The increase of apparent 

 length in this interval was from 4 deg. to 43^ deg." 



NOTES 

 The Priestley Centenary is to be celebrated, not only at 

 Birmingham, as we have before announced, but at Leeds, 

 by two meetings, to be held in the hall of the Philosophical 

 Society. The chair will he occupied at the two meetings by 

 Dr. Clifford Allbutt and Mr. Sykes Ward, F.C.S., and addresses 

 are to be given by the Rev. J. C. Odgers, who is to read a paper 

 On the personal histoiy of Priestley ; Mr. T. Fairley, F.CS., On 

 the phlogiston theory; and Mr. S.Jefferson, F.C.S., On the 

 discovery of oxygen. 



Dr. Acl.\nd, Regius Professor of Medicine in the University 

 of Oxford, has been appointed president of the Medical Council, 

 in succession to Dr. Paget, of Cambridge. We beheve the 

 appointment is a five-yearly one. 



At a general meeting of the Council of the Yorkshire College 

 of Science, held last Friday, Dr. T. E. Thorpe was elected Pro- 

 fessor of Chemistry. Dr. Thorpe has for the last four years had 

 the direction of large classes in theoretical and practical 

 chemistry at the Andersonian University, Glasgow. He is the 

 author of "A Manual of Inorganic Chemistry" and " A Text 

 Book of Quantitative Chemical Analysis," and has made many 

 original contributions to chemical literature. 



The death is announced of Father Paul Rosa, the colleague 

 of Father Secchi at the Roman Observatory. 



The Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly of New 

 South Wales, which was appointed to inquire into the manage- 

 ment of the Sydney Museum, has furnished its report, in which 

 the appointment of a Curator, with complete cliarge of the pro- 

 perty of the Museum, subject to the Minister of Public Instruc- 

 tion, is proposed ; at_the same time an extension of the building 

 at present holding the collection is suggested. 



Mr. C. a. Bowdler's apparatus for steering balloons was 

 tested on Saturday last at Woolwich, in the presence of several 

 officers of the scientific branches of the army. The balloon to 

 which the apparatus v/as attached was the new large one, 80 ft. 

 high, belonging to Mr. Coxwell, which was considered by Mr. 

 Bowdler too large for the size of his machine. His apparatus is 

 very simple, consisting of fans like the screw propeller of a ship, 

 3 ft. in diameter, and making 12 or 14 revolutions per second, 

 worked by hand. When the balloon was exactly balanced the 

 vertical fan caused it to rise and fall, but the horizontal fan was 

 found to have no effect whatever in guiding the direction. 



The French National Assembly has adopted the proposal to 

 award to M. Pasteur a pension of 12,000 francs, one half of 

 which reverts to his wife should she survive him. 



We view with great pleasure the advance of the Birk- 

 beck Institution within the last few years in its scientific 

 department. Quite recently a scientific society has been es- 

 tablished in connection therewith, the object of which is to 

 inculcate and develop a taste for scientific pursuits among its 

 members, by the reading of original papers upon scientific sub- 

 jects and by debates, and particularly for the encouragement of 

 the application of scientific principles to the arts and manufac- 

 tures. In immediate connection with this society we find a 

 Naturalists' Field Club, the aim of which is to organise excur- 

 sions to the various districts possessing scientific interest, for the 

 purpose of studying practically and under the direction of prac- 

 tical men, those sciences, such as geology, mineralogy, botany, 

 cStc, a real and sound knowledge of which can only be obtained 

 by the actual study of Nature. We wish this new undertaking 

 all possible success. As a proof of the high character of the 

 work performed by this institution and the excellence of the in- 

 struction provided, we need only rail attention to the fact that 

 this year its students have been awarded one half of the total 

 number of prizes oftered for public competition by the .Society of 

 Arts at its annual examinations. 



The Royal Academy of Belgium proposes the following sub- 

 jects for prizes to be awarded in 1S75 : — I. To examine and 

 discuss, on the basis of new experiments, the perturbing causes 

 which influence the determination of the electro-motive force 

 and the interior resistance of an element of the electric pile ; to 

 find out the number of these two quantities for some of the prin- 

 cipal piles. 2. To give an exposition of the knowledge attained 

 on the relations of heat to the development of phanerogamous 

 plants, particularly in reference to the periodic phenomena of 

 vegetation ; and, in this connection, to discuss the value of the 

 dynamical influence of solar heat on the evolution of plants. 

 3. To make new researches on the embryonic development 

 of the Tunicata. 4. To make new researches to establish the 

 compositon and mutual relations of albumenoid substances. 

 5. To describe the coal-system of t'ae basm ol Liege. A gold 

 medal of the value of 1,000 francs is the prize in sulijects 4 and 

 5 : one of 600 francs for subjects i,'2, and 3. The memoirs ought 

 to reach the Secret.ary of the Academy before August I, 1875. 

 They must be written either in La' in, French, or Flemish. 



The destruction of vineyards by Fhylloxcra, which has lately 

 so much engaged the attention of entomologists and botanists, was 

 recently the subject of a bill in the French Assembly. Many 

 prefects, on the plea of public welfare, have issued orders for the 

 uprooting and burning of diseased plants, and opposing the in- 

 troduction of foreign stocks ; but to make this desperate course 

 effectual, a special law putting the Phylloxera on a level with the 

 rinderpest is necessary. M. Destreanx has submitted a bill to 

 make this possible, and the Academy of Sciences gives it its 

 support. Notwithstanding the investigations that have made, 

 no reliable specific against Phylloxera seems to have been yet 

 discovered. The bill before the Assembly is received as 

 "urgent," 



