1892-93.] Dr D. Gill on the Minor Planet Victoria. 
47 
Preliminary Note on Observations of the Minor Planet 
Victoria in 1889. By Dr D. Gill, H.M. Astronomer at 
the Cape of Good Hope. 
(Read March 20, 1893.) 
The object of the work was — 
1st, To determine the mean solar horizontal parallax. 
2nd, To compare the tabular and observed motion of the planet, 
with a view to ascertain whether any periodic perturbations of short 
period occur, — such, for example, as would be accounted for by an 
error in the adopted value of the lunar equation. 
The results depend on the following series of observations : — 
A. Meridian observations of the comparison stars and of the 
planet made at twenty-one different observatories during 
the opposition of 1889. 
B. The heliometric triangulation of the comparison stars ; that is 
to say, measurement of the mutual distances of all the stars 
which are within 2 degrees of arc of each other (the range of 
measurement of modern heliometers), supplemented by mea- 
sures of the position angles, when such measures were neces- 
sary in consequence of unfavourable geometric conditions 
of rigidity from observations of distance only. These ob- 
servations were executed during the whole period when the 
stars were visible in 1890 at Yale, Gottingen, Bamberg, and 
the Cape. 
C. Heliometer observations of the angular distance of the planet 
from two opposite comparison stars, one vertically above 
and one below the planet in the evening, and from another 
pair of stars, one vertically above and one below the planet 
in the early morning. The work was carried out at Yale, 
Leipzig, Gottingen, and Bamberg, in the northern hemisphere, 
and at the Cape in the southern hemisphere, in strict accord- 
ance with a previously prepared programme. 
Eight hundred of such observations were secured in each hemi- 
sphere; and during the period June 15 to August 27 there are only 
