( 9 fur Uy die 
re 
blz. . SCIENCE. 
of the Queen Charlotte Islands, collected by Dr. 
George M. Dawson in 1878. The formation, by these 
data, is shown to be cretaceous rather than Jurassic, 
and is unconformably overlaid by tertiary strata, 
showing evidence of great disturbance, and supposed 
to be the representatives of the chief period of 
mountain-making for the region. The fossils are 
nearly all molluscan. 
— The Marquis de Gregorio has recently published 
a number of paleontological notices in the Naturalista 
sictliano, which chiefly relate to tertiary forms, es- 
pecially members of the family Pectinidae, of which, 
and of the Ostreidae, he has made a special study. 
He has also proposed, should four hundred subscribers 
offer themselves, to bring out an international geo- 
logical and paleontological journal, the articles to be 
in the languages of the respective authors, and to 
be copiously illustrated. A bibliography, in French, 
of geological literature, would form a prominent and 
useful feature of the proposed journal. 
— At the meeting of the Royal astronomical society 
in March, Dr. Gill, director of the observatory at the 
Cape of Good Hope, gave the following account of 
his arrangement with Dr. Elkin, which resulted in the 
measurements of stellar parallax already described in 
Science: ‘‘When I was in Strasbourg in 1879, be- 
fore going to the Cape, I met a young student, Dr. 
Elkin, a pupil of Professor Winnecke. He was then 
engaged in writing his dissertation on the parallax 
of @ Centauri, and he requested me to send him 
observations, which might have been made at the 
Cape, of that star. Atthe same time, I told him that 
I had acquired by purchase Lord Lindsay’s heliom- 
eter, and intended to have it mounted equatorially 
at the Cape, to carry on the work of investigation of 
stellar parallax. This seemed to fire his enthusiasm, 
and he expressed a great desire to go with me and 
share my work. I said I could offer him no position, 
and he replied that he did not want one. So I said, 
‘If you will be my guest, and come and live with 
me and share my work, you will be most welcome.’ 
He said he should be happy to do so, and he came to 
me so soon as he had taken his degree. So we have 
undertaken a certain amount of work together, and 
I should like to give a short account of it.’’ 
In the account which follows, he refers to the par- 
allaxes of a Centauri and Canopus. The result was 
about 0.75” for @ Centauri, which shows it to be the 
nearest known fixed star to our system, though farther 
than was formerly supposed. The most curious re- 
sult, however, is that for Canopus, or a Argus, which 
is, next to Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, 
and might therefore be supposed among the nearer 
ones ; but the resulting parallax is only 0.03%, a 
quantity too small to be relied upon. It would there- 
fore seem that this star is probably ten times the 
distance of Sirius. In the same connection, Dr. Gill 
presented to the society an unpublished investigation 
by Struve, at Pulkova, which gave a parallax of 0.5” 
for Aldebaran, a star which no one seems to have 
before attacked for parallax purposes. 
— Professor Pickering, whose work in stellar pho- . 
tometry is so widely known, during his last summer’s 
visit to European observatories was very fortunate 
in discovering valuable unpublished manuscripts of 
a large part of the photometric work of Sir William 
Herschel. First in importance were two unpublished 
catalogues, which, with the four published in the 
Philosophical transactions of the Royal society, com- 
plete the determination of the brightness of all the 
stars of Flamsteed’s catalogue at a time when no 
other estimates of their magnitudes are known to 
exist (about a hundred years ago). Professor Pick- 
ering’s reduction of these catalogues by comparison 
with a uniform photometric scale (the logarithm 
of whose light-ratio is 0.4) has shown that Herschel’s 
estimates of magnitudes were much more accurate 
than has been generally supposed, thus rendering 
the discovery of the two additional catalogues all the 
more valuable. 
Of much importance, too, was the discovery of the 
journal of the original comparisons, whose results 
are contained in all six of these catalogues, thus giv- 
ing the date of each comparison. At the suggestion 
of Mr. Chandler, whose forthcoming bibliography of 
variable stars will be of great value, the observations 
of the variable stars contained in this journal have 
been examined with the idea of correcting or check- 
ing the periods of some of the well-known variables 
by these older observations; and the results are given 
in a paper recently presented to the American acad- 
emy of arts and sciences by Professor Pickering. 
The periods of many of the later discovered variables 
are so irregular, or so little is known of them, that 
Herschel’s observations of these cannot be utilized 
till these periods are better determined from further 
observation or discussion; and thus, much of the 
value of these old observations is still to be deter- 
mined in the future; but it is well to know that they 
are now accessible. In the case of two or three of 
the variables, however, they are sufficient to give 
corrections to the periods which are of some value, 
and would be still more so if Herschel had only 
(Vou. IIL, No. 67. 
~ 
given the hour, as well as the night, of observation. - 
As it is, the times can only be fixed between the 
limits of twilight and rising or setting of the star, 
unless, as the writer would suggest, the order and 
number of the observations in any one night might 
fix the limits of time a little more closely in some 
cases. 
—It may not be generally known in the United 
States, that the publication of the Journal de zoologie 
and of the Revue et magazin de zoologie has ceased ; 
that of the former in consequence of the death of 
Professor Gervais, of the latter for other reasons. 
As the Bulletin of the Société zoologique de France 
covers the scope of these journals, and as the Société 
is very desirous of entering into relations of exchange 
with the American institutions, it is suggested by 
the secretary of the Smithsonian institution, that the 
transfer in question of the address should be made. 
The institution, as heretofore, will take much pleas- 
ure in transmitting parcels addressed to the Société 
zoologique, or to any other of the learned bodies of 
France. a 
