for the year 1878. xxi 



to the cause and propagation of this dreadful malady, indi- 

 cate the necessity of increased research into its etiology, 

 which, it is to be hoped, will be prosecuted with the steady 

 view of discovering the truth, rather than of advocating 

 favourite opinions and speculations. Human life is largely 

 concerned in this question, and it takes no great foresight 

 to estimate of what surpassing value any means of prevent- 

 ing and staying the spread of this disease will yet become. 

 The true etiology once found, the hope that it will then be 

 possible to banish typhoid fever from any community is 

 surely not an unreasonable one. 



Looking back upon the additions to knowledge that have 

 been made during the past year in the various branches of 

 science, our attention is arrested by several subjects of more 

 than ordinary interest,, to one or two of which I would now 

 refer. 



The results obtained from the transit of Venus observa- 

 tions have not yet been finally dealt with, although partial 

 deductions from British and French observatories have been 

 published. Last summer the Astronomer Royal reported 

 to Parliament on " The Value of the Mean Solar Parallax 

 Deducible from Observations of the Transit by British Ob- 

 servers," and the resulting solar parallax was stated to be 

 8"*764. Mr. Stone, of the Cape of Good Hope, who is one 

 of our highest authorities upon this subject, questions the 

 correctness of the conclusions arrived at in this report, and, 

 in an article which appears in the Monthly Notices of the 

 Astronomical Society, he gives the result of the observations 

 treated in his OAvn way, wherein the parallax differs sensibly 

 from the Greenwich deductions. In the same periodical/ 

 Captain Tupman, who had charge of the Greenwich compu- 

 tations, referring to Mr. Stone's paper, speaks of the method 

 of treatment of the observations of ingress at Greenwich as 

 unsatisfactory. This throws more weight on Mr. Stone's 



