390 Miscellanies. 



did the terms oxygen and azote, spontaneously uttered on that occa- 

 sion. A sensation, say the reviewers, as agreeable and unexpected, 

 was experienced by them in reading a description, printed in another 

 henaisphere, of a country which they had considered to be divided 

 between frosts and forests, and to find the most recent and best estab- 

 lished principles of one of the most recent of the sciences, applied to it 

 with precision and discernment. May we be pardoned, say they, for 

 such an explosion of European self love ! How limited soever, may 

 have been such labors as these, on the other side of the Atlantic, our 

 American brethren will not be long in placing themselves in a condi- 

 tion to afford us the like. 



ASTRONOMY AND MECHANICAL SCIENCE. 



1. Bielah Comet. — The periodical comet discovered on the 2Gth 

 of Feb. 1826, by M. Biela, of Josephstadt, which performs its rev- 

 olution round the sun in about six years and three quarters, and 

 whose return in the present year has been made the subject of elab- 

 orate calculations by mathematicians of the first eminence, has not 

 disappointed the expectations of astronomers. It is already visible 

 in superior telescopes, and may be expected shortly to be seen in its 

 approach to the sun, if not by the naked eye, at least with instruments 

 of moderate power. Its place this morning before sunrise, was 

 about one and a half degrees S. W. of & Aurigee, and its actual course 

 is directed nearly tovv^ards the star of the same name in Gemini, but 

 its motion is rapid, and it will speedily assume a more southern di- 

 rection. The reappearance of this comet, the second of short pe- 

 riod, with which we are acquainted, has been looked for with anxious 

 interest by astronomers, as likely to elucidate some of the most cu- 

 rious points in the constitution of our system, and among the won- 

 derful verifications of astronomical theories which observation is con- 

 stantly affording, it is hardly possible to imagine any more striking 

 than the appearance after the lapse of nearly seven years, of such 

 an all but imperceptible cloud or wisp of vapor, true however to its 

 predicted time and place, and obeying the same laws, as those which 

 regulate the movements of the planets. — Slovgh, Sept. 24, 1832. — 

 English Paper. 



2. Observatory of Geneva. — This institution has received the val- 

 uable acquisition of the two large instruments which were ordered of 



