148 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts mid Letters. 



But Pond, who was Astronomer Royal from 1811 to 1835, 

 has left vast folios of observations; a good many of them 

 need a new reduction and discussion. It may, perhaps, be 

 hoped that the Greenwich authorities will accomplish this 

 work at some future period; it is probably not immediately 

 pressing. 



Bessel, at Konigsberg, accumulated a great store of ob- 

 servations . Among them is the material for a considerable 

 catalogue of zodiacal stars, which a year's work would per- 

 haps complete ready for press. It is all indexed and its 

 mean epoch would be 1830 or 1835. The stars contained in 

 it are also mostly in Piazzi and Mayer; but Bessel's obser- 

 vations are so much better than these as to make up for 

 their comparative newness. 



Something can also be made out of the same great astron- 

 omer's work between 1814 and 1819 although, his instru- 

 ments were then very inferior to those employed later. 



Another very useful, though very scattered, collection of 

 older star-places, mainly declinations, could be made up by 

 a careful study of the early latitude work of various astron- 

 omers from Mudge and Lambson, down to Bessel, Gauss 

 and Struve. 



Struve's great Dorpat catalogue, published in 1852, but 

 containing results of observations back to 1822, has been, I 

 believe, completely reobserved at Pulkova. So far as the 

 other catalogues for epochs about 1830 are concerned, I 

 fancy few of them need much reobservation; as they large- 

 ly contain identical stars. 



A few stars in the Abo catalogue (Argelander's of 1830) 

 need reobservation as well as rediscussion. My own copy 

 of this catalogue once belonged to the lamented Tiele, an as- 

 sistant at Bonn; and contains manuscript notes of results — 

 apparently calculated under Argelander's direction, which 

 are nowhere else published as far as I know. The doubtful 

 stars ar3 in all cases such as were imperfectly observed be- 

 fore Argelander, and so mentioned in his notes. 



There is a class of several hundred stars which, although 

 visible to the naked eye, were only found in Lalande's and 

 Bessel's zones when Argelander placed them in the Urano- 



