366 



derstand, or that I had not the true inspiration, as, certainly, 

 they paid not the slightest regard to the notice to quit which 

 I then gave them. ^ '_~ 



" Martin, in his Tour to the Western Isles, says, that the 

 ancient race of the Island of B,ona was, about the year 1700, 

 all destroyed in the following manner : — First, a swarm of 

 rats, none knows how, came into the island and eat up all the 

 corn. In the next place, some seamen landed and robbed 

 them (the people) of what provisions they had left, and all 

 died before the usual time of the arrival of the boat from 

 Lewis." 



The President read a paper on the probable errors of the 

 eye and ear in transit observations. 



" Among the important applications of the Electric Tele- 

 graph which every day is producing, none is more interesting to 

 those who pursue physical inquiries than its power of making 

 time-determinations with a precision and facility which pro- 

 mise ere long to supersede the existing processes. In its very 

 first application to determine longitudes by making the clock 

 of each station beat its time at the other, its immeasurable 

 superiority was at once revealed ; and though it has not been 

 as completely established in the more ordinary operations of 

 the Observatory, yet that is only an affair of a few years. 

 One of these seems specially to invite it, — the determination of 

 right ascension; and already Mitchel and, I believe, others 

 have obtained results which appear to surpass those hitherto 

 obtained by the transit instrument. 



" The principle is this : the clock, by a well-known appa- 

 ratus, prints on some fit surface a series of equidistant dots 

 by the successive vibrations of its pendulum. Between any 

 pair of these the observer can interpose a dot at the instant of 

 a phenomenon, and its place, with respect to them, gives the 

 time. This reduction can be made at leisure, as the record is 

 permanent, and a scale of any reasonable magnitude can be 



