ADVANCEMENT OE SCIENCE. 129 



invalidate the conclusion that this must be the eclipse of Herodotus. In reply 

 Dr. Hincks writes to the Athenceitm (Oct. 25) that Dr. Whewell and Mr. Bos- 

 anquet ave both mistaken: that the paper by the Astronomer Eoyal in the Phil. 

 Trans, for 1853 coutaios no calculation for the eclipse of 603 B.C. but only for 

 that of 585 B.C. which latter is inconsistent with known historical facts: the for- 

 mer (603) has never been calculated since Mr. Baily's paper in 1811; and it ia 

 known that the tables used by Mr. Baily are defective. Dr. Hincks believes that 

 the error in the moon's lougitude introduced by adopting this eclipse will be found 

 consistent -with those pointed out by Mr. Adams to exist in Damoiseau's tables, 

 and, after throwing back on Dr. Whewell the imputation of ignorance, again im- 

 presses on astronomers the necessity of re-calculating the track for 603 B.C. 

 There the matter rests for the present. 



THE MOON'S ROTATION. 



Mr. Jelinger Symons, one of " Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools," communi- 

 cated to The Times not long ago a graud discovery he had made, viz. — that astron- 

 omers were all wrong in supposing the moon to have a rotation round its axis. 

 Undeterred by the universal reclamation that assailed him, he brought the subject 

 forward at the British Association, following a paper read by Dr. Whewell on the 

 subject with one' of his own, entitled " On Phenomena recently discovered in the 

 Moon." The "recently discovered phenomena" consisted ouly of his previous 

 assertion, with the addition, that the proper mode of describing the moon's motion 

 was to say that she rotated "round a line, not exactly passing through the earth 

 but near it." He illustrated his position by a machine, which however, was seen, 

 by those capable of analysing its motions, to contradict its author. Unfortun- 

 ately for himself, this gentleman travelled out of his subject iuto another depart- 

 ment in an incidental sentence, when he stated, as a proof how necessary it was to 

 correct the statements in which philosophers sometimes indulged, that it was now 

 asserted that there were not large assemblages of water upon the moon, whereas 

 Newton has uot only traced out her seas, but had actually calculated the heights 

 of the lunar tides — Mr. Symons thus interpreting " lunar tides" to mean tides on 

 the moon instead of tides on the earth caused by the attraction of the moon. 



Innumerable illustrations have been given of this motion of the moon for the 

 purpose of rendering this purely geometrical conception familiar to minds not 

 versed in geometry, but we do not remember to have met with the following — 

 viz : that a spectator on the moon has just the same reason to attribute a motion 

 round its axis to his moon, as an earthsman has to his earth: for he will find his 

 meridian passing successively through every quarter of the heavens aud complet- 

 ing a revolution once a month, just as a spectator on the earth finds his meridian 

 passing through every quarter of the heavens once in a siderial day ; the result 

 being in each case the same, namely, an apparent motion of the heavens from east 

 to west completing a revolution, in the case of the earth, in one day, in that of 

 the moon, in one lunation; and, necessarily, the interpretation of such apparent 

 motion being also the same. 



VOL. II. — I 



