98 
SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
[The Editor feels that he must apologise to his readers for the extreme 
shortness of the various summaries in the present Number. The 
explanation is, that room had to be made for the articles which 
have — in one case especially — far outrun their usual and proper 
limits .] 
ASTRONOMY". 
FJ1HE Sun . — According to Jthe Astronomer Royal, the spots at present are 
fewer than he has ever known. Photography is being applied to them 
at Greenwich. A valuable series of photographs, comprising more than an 
entire spot-cycle of eleven years, has been presented to the Astronomical 
Society by the executors of Professor Selwyn. Padre Secchi has reported 
his observations from April 23 to J une 28 to the Academie des Sciences. 
He had been recording, not, as formerly, the number, but the area of the 
spots, which were steadily diminishing, as well as the daily number of 
protuberances. The more vigorous eruptions ceased as the larger spots 
disappeared ; lofty protuberances had become very rare j those at the pole 
had greatly decreased ; and the faculse which had formed polar coronae had 
vanished ; so that on the whole we may be passing through a minimum of 
these phenomena. 
The Moon . — The remarkable flattenings of the limb to which the Rev. 
H. C. Key drew attention twelve years ago were re-observed on Nov. 11 or 
12, to great advantage, by himself, Messrs. Birt, With, and Erck. Mr. Key 
says that if these two depressions had been repeated all round the limb its 
form would have been a very decided dodecahedron. The suitable libration 
had been previously computed by Mr. Marth, but as Mr. With had seen 
them even more strikingly during the previous lunation, it is evident that 
they are worth looking for at other epochs. Their interest arises from the 
fact that they cannot be the profile exhibitions of great plains, which would 
still preserve the general convexity of outline, but must have the effect of 
concavities as respects the centre of the moon ; resembling nothing, at least 
of any magnitude, in the visible hemisphere : an indication, perhaps, that 
the formations at the back of the moon may not be entirely similar to those 
on this side. 
Mars. — Dr. Terby, of Louvain, is actively occupied in collecting observa- 
tions and drawings of this planet. The Observatory at Leyden has pur- 
chased the “ Areographische Fragmente ” in two MS. volumes, left 
unpublished by Schroter. Kononewitsch suspects a diminution of the 
planet’s brightness. The Astronomer Royal has pointed out the importance 
