REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 21 



accepted for publication has been relinquished because it was subse- 

 quently found that the works could be given to the public, under 

 certain conditions, through other agencies. In such cases the favor- 

 able opinion expressed by the Institution as to the character of the 

 work, or the assistance rendered by the subscription on the part of the 

 Kegents, for a number of copies to be distributed in exchange for 

 other books among our foreign correspondents, has been sufficient to 

 Induce some liberal minded parties to undertake the publication, 

 rather as an enterprise connected with the reputation of their estab- 

 lishments, than as a matter of profit. 



Among the works of this class is the "Theory of the Motion of the 

 Heavenly Bodies," by the celebrated G-auss, translated by Captain C. 

 H. Davis, U. S. N., late superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, 

 which was originally accepted by us for publication, but was after- 

 wards relinquished to Messrs. Little & Brown, of Boston, who have 

 shown in this instance, as well as in others of a similar character, a 

 liberality which cannot be otherwise than highly appreciated by a 

 discerning public. This book, which is essential to the advance of 

 practical astronomy, was published in Latin, in Hamburg, in 1809, 

 and is now of difficult access, as well as of restricted use, on account 

 of the language in which it appeared. It gives a complete system of 

 formulas and processes for computing the movement of a body revolv- 

 ing in an ellipse, or in any other curve belonging to the class of conic 

 sections, and explains a general method of determining the orbit of a 

 planet or a comet from three observations of the position of the body 

 as seen from the earth. The essay was called for at the time it was 

 produced by the wants of science. The planet Ceres, discovered on 

 the first day of the present century by Piazzi, of Italy, had been 

 lost to astronomers in its passage through the portion of the heavens 

 illuminated by the beams of the sun, and could not be found by the 

 means then known, when Gauss, from a few observations of its former 

 place, calculated its orbit, and furnished an ephemeris by which it 

 was readily rediscovered. The methods employed in this determina- 

 tion were afterwards given in a systematic form in the work now 

 translated. The copies subscribed for by the Institution, on account 

 of exchanges, and those paid for by the Navy Department, for the 

 use of the computers of the Nautical Almanac, were sufficient to 

 secure the publication of the work, which could not have been under- 

 taken without these aids. 



In accordance with the same policy the Institution has subscribed 

 for a few copies of a work on " The Pleiocene Fossils of South Caro- 



