Literary Notices. 393 



about ten or eleven o'clock at night. The whole series exhibits a 

 complete cycle of the stars of the constellations of Bode. The net 

 or web on which the maps are constructed, showing, for the entire 

 circumference, and to nearly 15° below the equator, every individual 

 degree of both Right Ascension and Declination was ascertained by 

 Dr. Heis, of Munster, to be correct to a small fraction of a degree. 

 It forms a separate plate in the atlas, so as not to interfere with the 

 distinctness of the other maps. A net of circles of altitude and 

 azmiuth is also added, the whole together forming an index of the 

 completest kind for observing and mapping shooting stars. To 

 illustrate by an example the characteristic features of the maps, the 

 branching wings of Cygnus, in whatever map of the series they 

 appear, point infallibly to the last star of the tail of Ursa Major : 

 and the brightest stars of Draco are found, as they are in the sky, 

 in a direct line between these two distant points. The beginning and 

 ends of a meteor's course being noted upon one of the maps, and 

 these two points being joined, the straight line between them, how- 

 ever distant they may be, represents the meteor's course across the 

 sky, from its point of appearance to its disappearance among the 

 stars. Dr. Denison Olmstead, it is well known, explained the 

 existence of the radiant point of meteors, by stating it to be the 

 vanishing point of then straight courses seen in perspective. It 

 happens not unfrequently that the tracks of twenty or thirty 

 meteors, seen on a single night, prolonged backwards upon the 

 maps, are found to intersect each other in a single point. Such a 

 circumstance, where it occurs, cannot be purely accidental ; but, on 

 the contrary, it amounts to a positive proof that the point in question 

 is the vanishing point of a series of parallel flights, which together 

 compose a true meteoric shower. The point determined in this 

 manner is the radiant point, whose position determines the axis of 

 the shower, or the general direction of the meteors. Radiant points 

 determined by means of these maps are described in the Monthly 

 Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for Dec. 9, 1S64, and 

 March 10, 1865. They have reappeared in the present year, as 

 described at a recent meeting of the Astronomical Society, in such 

 a manner as to show that the dates of meteoric showers, and the 

 positions of their attendant radiant points, are singularly fixed and 

 permanent, and that the meteoric showers themselves, however 

 startling the conclusion may appear to our readers unaccustomed to 

 speculate in astronomy, are a collection of small planetary or 

 cometary bodies coming into direct collision with the earth. The 

 new charts are the work of Mr. Alexander Herschel, to whom this 

 branch of astronomy is, in many other respects, deeply indebted. 



Seven Lectures on Scripture and Science. By John Eliot 

 Howard, F.L.S., etc. (Groombridge & Sons.) — We can only state 

 the contents and nature of this work, as a review of its opinions 

 would carry us beyond our boundaries into the regions of critical 

 and polemical theology. The subjects treated by Mr. Howard 

 are — "The Scriptures viewed as the Oracles of God," "The Books 

 of the Old Testament and their Authorship," "The New Testa- 

 ment, its Authority and Authorship," " Colenso and his Diffi- 



