284 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 60. 



late Horatio Stone, Kockford College, Rock- 

 ford, 111., receives $28,000. Donations to the 

 University of Pennsylvania during the past 

 month amount to $69,370.23. 



At the meeting of the Board of Trustees of 

 Princeton College, held on February 13th, Mr. 

 J. Bayard Henry, '77, of Philadelphia, was 

 elected trustee in place of William Libbey, of 

 New York City, deceased, and Mr. Howard 

 Crosby Warren, '89, was appointed assistant 

 professor in experimental psychology. 



On the birthday of Mr. Henry W. Sage, cele- 

 brated at Cornell University on January 30, the 

 following list of his gifts to the University was 

 noted: 



Sage College for women, with endow- 

 ment fund (1873) $266,000 



Sage Chapel (1873) 30,000 



Contribution towards extinguishment of a 



floating debt (1881) 30,000 



House of Sage professor of philosophy 



(1886) 11,000 



Susan Linn Sage chair of philosophy 



(1886) 50,000 



Susan Linn school of philosophy (1886)... 200,000 



University library building (1891) 260,000 



University library endowment (1891) 300,000 



Casts for archaeological museum (1891).... 8,000 



$1,155,000 

 A MEMORIAL praying for the admission of 

 women to degrees at Cambridge University has 

 received the signatures of 2,200 university mem- 

 bers. 



De. Cesaee Lombeoso has been transferred 

 from the chair of legal medicine in the Uni- 

 versity of Turin, to the post of professor of 

 psychiatry. He has also been made director of 

 the University Clinic for Mental Diseases. 



William Waede Fowlee, M.A., Fellow of 

 Lincoln College, Oxford, has been appointed a 

 Curator of the Botanic Garden, in place of 

 Edward Chapman, M.A., Fellow of Magdalen 

 College, resigned. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



AMBEICAN JUDGMENTS OF AMEEICAN ASTEON- 

 OMY. 



The astronomical notes published in the last 

 two numbers of SCIENCE afford instructive illus- 



trations of a habit of judging American and for- 

 eign scientific work which is too prevalent 

 among us. While in nearly every other country 

 scientific investigators and writers are apt to be 

 more or less biased in favor of their own 

 countrymen, giving frequent occasion for re- 

 marks on their ignorance of what is going on 

 outside and on their general insularity, the sys- 

 tem prevalent among us is directly the contrary, 

 at least in astronomy, and, to a certain ex- 

 tent, in the allied sciences. The way in which 

 this bias displays itself is so well illustrated by 

 the notes in question that we may be pardoned 

 for taking them as a text for some remarks. 



Among the great wants of astronomy for half 

 a century past has been a standard system of 

 positions of the principal fixed stars, which 

 should serve as points of reference in defining 

 the positions of other stars and of the heavenly 

 bodies in general. The first step toward this 

 end was taken by Dr. Auwers about 1870, and 

 consisted of a determination of the corrections 

 necessary to reduce the principal modern cata- 

 logues of stars to a homogeneous mean system; 

 that is to say, to a system which should be as 

 nearly as possible self-consistent, and express 

 the mean result of all the determinations of 

 positions made in each region of the heavens. 

 But this work, though most ably performed and 

 marking an epoch in astronomy of precision, 

 was defective in not rigorously taking account 

 of the proper motions of the stars. Hence, Dr. 

 Auwer's system was valid only near a central 

 epoch, say about 1840 or 1850. That he did 

 not make it permanently valid was doubtless 

 due to the fact that at that time the older ob- 

 servations, especially those of Bradley, had not 

 been reduced with sufficient rigor to determine 

 the proper motions. It was, therefore, a fitting 

 complement of his work that he set about the 

 thorough re-reduction of Bradley's observations 

 at Greenwich with the mural quadrant, during 

 the years 1750-1757. 



About 1878 was published Boss's system of 

 declinations, which appeared in a quarto volume 

 of some 200 pages. A careful examination of 

 this work showed that it stood unequalled in the 

 thoroughness with which all the material was 

 collected and worked up ; in the completeness 

 with which the errors of the older adopted 



