552 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 981 



saying that every star in the heavens . . . 

 must have some proper motion," but never- 

 theless he stoutly insists that for most stars 

 this motion is of negligible amount, because 

 the contrary has not yet been proved. 



While the logic thus employed seems some- 

 what dubious, its quality need not be here too 

 closely scanned. The present state of knowl- 

 edge concerning stellar proper motions may be 

 described as occupying intermediate ground be- 

 tween the fixity of the faint stars assumed by 

 Burnham and his alternative proposition 

 quoted above, which may be paraphrased into : 

 Every star in the heavens does possess a sen- 

 sible proper motion. The reviewer will 

 undertake to show elsewhere that, at least 

 down to the thirteenth magnitude, the latter 

 proposition is more nearly true than is Burn- 

 ham's assumption of fixity for the faint stars. 

 If such be the case, the proper motions de- 

 rived in this volume can command but little 

 credence; they are quite futile, and the chief 

 value of the work must be sought not in the 

 fulfilment of its professed purposes, but in 

 the furnishing of data from which the mo- 

 tions of the fainter stars may hereafter be de- 

 rived when those of the brighter stars have 

 been otherwise determined. 



The as yet unborn investigator of stellar 

 motions will find in this volume a rich store 

 of material that he must use and will use for 

 this purpose, albeit with writhings of spirit at 

 the scanty information vouchsafed concerning 

 its details, viz. : " These observations have 

 been made in the usual way, fully described 

 heretofore." The reviewer has not been able 

 to find this description. He is left in doubt 

 as to whether " the usual way " refers to ob- 

 servations of close double stars, such as have 

 constituted the hulk of the author's previous 

 work, or whether it implies that those modifi- 

 cations of program have been introduced 

 that are required by the much greater angular 

 distances between the stars here observed. 

 How and with what precision was the parallel 

 determined? How has the small, but trouble- 

 some, influence of refraction been dealt with? 

 etc. These are questions that necessarily 

 arise here, although of little consequence in 



ordinary double-star work. They find no 

 answer in the text and, being unanswered, 

 they must diminish the influence of the work 

 and detract from the credence presumably due 

 to its intrinsic character. 



George C. Comstock 



SCIENTIFIC JOUBNALS AND ARTICLES 

 The articles in the American Journal of 

 Science for October are : 



' ' Distribution of the Active Deposit of Kadium 

 in an Electric Field (II.)," E. M. Wellisch. 



"Adjustment of the Quartz Spectrograph," C. 

 C. Hutchins. 



"Stability Relations of the Silica Minerals," C. 

 N. Fenner. 



' ' Custerite : A New Contact Metamorphie Min- 

 eral," J. B. Umpleby, W. T. Schaller and E. S. 

 Larsen. 



' ' Ordovician Outlier at Hyde Manor in Sud- 

 bury, Vermont, " T. N. Dale. 



' ' Preparation of Tellurous Acid and Copper Am- 

 monium Tellurite, " G. O. Oberhelman and P. E. 

 Browning. 



' ' Determination of Water of Crystallization in 

 Sulphates, " S. B. Kuzirian. 



' ' Paleozoic Section in Northern Utah, " G. B. 

 Richardson. 



The September issue of Terrestrial Magnet- 

 ism and Atmospheric Electricity contains the 

 following articles : 



"Description of the C. I. W. Combined Mag- 

 netometer and Earth Inductor, " J. A. Fleming 

 and J. A. Widmer. 



' ' Magnetic Declinations and Chart Corrections 

 Obtained by the Carnegie from Port Stanley, Falk- 

 land Islands, to St. Helena and Bahia, February to 

 April, 1913," L. A. Bauer and W. J. Peters. 



"Magnetic Results of Halley's Expedition, 

 1698-1700," L. A. Bauer. 



' ' Halley 's Observations of the Magnetic Declina- 

 tion, 1698-1700," J. P. Ault and W. F. Wallis. 



' ' On an Auroral Expedition to Bossekop, in the 

 Spring of 1913," C. Stormer. 



"Biographical Sketch of William Sutherland," 

 E. F. J. Love. 



' ' Results of Magnetic Observations Made by the 

 United States Coast and Geodetic Survey at the 

 Time of the Solar Eclipse of October 10, 1912," 

 O. H. Tittmann. 



Letters to Editor : ' ' Principal Magnetic Storms 



