358 Scientific Intelligence. 



with the personal incentive derived from the fact of the author- 

 ess's having been a pupil of Miss Mitchell at Vassar College, led 

 to her undertaking a new determination. 



Starting from Rumker's elements all the observations are com- 

 pared with them, using star places derived from all available 

 sources including the unpublished zones of the Astron. Gesell- 

 schaft, and taking into consideration as far as possible the syste- 

 matic errors of the various authorities. The perturbations by 

 Venus, the Earth, Mars and Jupiter are applied to the normal 

 places which are obtained by using places of the sun from Lever 

 rier's tables. The differential coefficients for the 6 normal places 

 are computed by Schonfeld's formula and the normal equations 

 are solved both for a parabola and an indeterminate conic section. 

 In this latter case the eccentricity comes out = 1*0001727, indi- 

 cating a hyperbolic character of the orbit. The reduction of the 

 sums of the squares of the residuals from 702*11 for the parabola 

 to 171*87 for the hyperbola makes the conclusion seem well war- 

 ranted that the observational data require this latter curve for 

 their satisfactory representation, thus confirmirig Rumker's sim- 

 ilar conclusion. 



2. Schreiner's Spectral- Analyse Der Gestirne. — It is announced 

 that a translation by Prof. E. JB. Frost of Dartmouth College, of 

 Dr. Schreiner's well known work, is to be issued in the autumn 

 of 1 893. Subscriptions ($5) are solicited by the publishers, 

 Messrs. Ginn & Co., Boston. 



V. Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 



1. Observations in the West Indies / by Alexander Agassiz. 

 (In a letter to J. D. Dana, dated Steam Yacht " Wild Duck," 

 Nassau, March, 189S). — Here we are back at Nassau for the third 

 time, and thinking you might be interested to hear of my cruises, 

 I send you a short sketch of our trip. The first time we left 

 Nassau we entered the Bahama Bank at Douglass Channel and 

 crossed the Bank to North Eleuthera, where we examined the 

 " Glass Window " and the northern extremity of Eleuthera, we 

 then sailed along the west shore of the island close enough to get 

 a good view of its characteristics as far as Rock Harbor at the 

 southern end. We steamed out into Exuma Sound through the 

 Beach Channel and round the southern end of Eleuthera to little 

 San Salvador, and the northwest end of Cat Island, where are the 

 hig-hest hills of the Bahamas. We then skirted Cat Island along 

 its western face, rounded the southern extremity and made for 

 Riding Rocks on the western side of Watling's Island. We cir- 

 cumnavigated Watling, passed over to Rum Cay, then to north- 

 ern part of Long Island, visiting Clarence Harbor; next we 

 crossed to Fortune Island, and passed to the east side near the 

 northern end of the island on the Crooked Island Bank. From 

 there we crossed to Caicos Bank, crossing that bank from French 

 Cay to Long Island, passed by Cuklum Harbor and ended our 



