Miscellaneous Intelligence. 399 



feature of the flora which is noteworthy is the extreme paucity of 

 species in certain usually well represented families; thus but 41 

 Uyperaceoe are recorded. This, it is true, may well be due largely 

 to the difficulty of the group and the fact that many species 

 present in the flora have yet to be discriminated and recorded. 

 The same explanation, however, can hardly apply to the JEJricacece, 

 of which but one species, or to the ferns, of which only two species, 

 Gystopteris fragilis and Onoclea Struthiopteris, are recorded for 

 any part of the state. b. l. k. 



III. Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 



1. The new Star in Perseus. — As a culminating result of the 

 vigilance with which Dr. Thomas D. Anderson of Edinburgh, 

 Scotland, has watched the northern heavens and which has fur- 

 nished us with some two dozen new variable stars in the past few 

 years, a new star in Perseus w T as discovered by him on February 

 21 at 14 hours 40 min. Greenwich mean time. It was then a 

 little brighter than a third magnitude star and shone with a 

 bluish-white light. The northern sky is now so extensively 

 patrolled by photography that for the first time in the history of 

 sudden apparitions of new stars we are able to say almost defi- 

 nitely when the outburst took place. A photograph taken at 

 Harvard on February 19 shows no trace of the star, though stars 

 to the eleventh magnitude are impressed, and a valuable plate 

 secured by A. Stanley Williams, of Hove, Sussex, England, 28 

 hours before the discovery by Dr. Anderson, makes it certain that 

 the new star must have then been fainter than a twelfth magni- 

 tude star. We are, therefore, able to time the occurrence within 

 14 hours. 



The star continued to increase in brilliancy until February 23, 

 when it was estimated at Harvard as of the magnitude 0*0, that 

 is about a quarter magnitude, or about 25 per cent brighter than 

 any star in the northern hemisphere, and only falling below Sirius 

 and Canopus in the southern sky. This brilliancy has only been 

 surpassed by temporary stars twice in historic records, once in 

 1 572 and again in 1604, the two new stars described by Tycho 

 and Kepler. On February 24 when the nova was first seen at 

 the Yale Observatory, in broad daylight, it had already fallen to 

 equality with Capella and diminished during the day lully half a 

 magnitude. Since then the decline has been slow and steady 

 with occasional fluctuations, and about April 1 it was of the fifth 

 magnitude or 100 times fainter than at its maximum ; and the 

 color had gradually changed to an orange hue. 



The most interesting and valuable features of the apparition will 

 doubtless be found in the spectroscopic results. At present all the 

 data have of course not been collated and discussed, but it seems 

 certain that an earlier stage of development has been observed 

 than on any previous new star. The first observations at 

 Harvard, on February 22, show a spectrum quite unlike that of 



