478 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 
wonderfully useful publication, and it is hard to understand how 
astronomers hitherto have managed to get on without such a 
handbook, it is only a great pity that it has not been published 
in the shape of a handbook, but in a place where it will not be 
easily accessible to many people. It gives in twenty chapters, 
chronologically arranged, lists of all the different values of astro- 
nomical constants, which have been published from the earliest 
times and down to 1877, in all cases describing the way of finding 
the particular value and adding exact references, by means of 
which anyone can find out for himself, all about any value. And 
more than that, the titles of the principal books and memoirs 
relating to any subject within the range of the repertory are also 
given, but completeness is not aimed at in this respect. As far 
as we have been able to ascertain, the lists of constants are very 
complete and very correct, and will save from oblivion many a 
thing which has been often hidden by its author in some obscure 
corner of the literature. 
‘M. Houzeau, who by this excellent piece of work has shown 
himself eminently familiar with astronomical literature, ancient 
and modern, and who already in his “Catalogue des Ouvrages 
dAstronomie et de Meteorologie qui se trouvent dans les 
principales Bibliothéques de la Belgique” (1878), has given a 
very convenient bibliography, is about to publish a “ Biblio- 
graphie genérale de YAstronomie ” in conjunction with M. A. 
Lancaster, of the Brussels Observatory. This work is to be 
divided into three parts, Books, Memoirs, and Observations, and 
will be a most useful guide in the literature of Astronomy. 
An index to the records of observations, &c., outside the 
ordinary routine work at Greenwich, was printed in the Monthly 
Notices (xxxix. p. 505). 
A complete “Subject-Index to the Publications of the U.S.Naval 
Observatory from 1845 to 1875” by Professor E. 8. Holden, is 
in the press (74 pages 4to). 
A list of books and memoirs on celestial spectrum analysis, by 
M. Fiévez, appears in the “Annuaire de l’ Observatoire de Bruxelles” 
for 1879, pp. 255-338. 
Periodicals like Nature and The Observatory contain a great 
deal of bibliographical information in a pleasant form. Few have 
probably an idea of the large amount of important notes on astro- 
