Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2119, 19 February 1870, Page 3

Rkjiarkadlf. Discuvuiy.— “The Astronomer Royal,” says tlio Athnimum, “has made a remarkable discovery, and communicated it to the Royal Astronomical Society in a‘Note mi Atmospheric Chromatic Dispersion as affecting Telescopic Observation ; and on the means of correcting it.’ In observing Mercury during a transit, he had been painfully struck with the color and consequent indistinctness of the upper and lower limbs both of the sun and of the planet; and looking forward to the tsansits of Venus, on which so many astronomical'expectations arc now fixed, he had fears for the result. The transit is best observed when the sun is low, and consequently when the atmospheric refraction and dispersion are most considerable. In these circumstances the thing to bo done was to find an efficient corrective, anil this is what Mr Airy has achieved, ‘in the application of a glass prism of small refracting angle in the eyc-pieee of the telescope. ’ This is the discovery. It has been well tested at the (Greenwich Observatory, and with complete success. ‘By this construction,’ says the Astronomer Royal, ‘it is made possible to examine a celestial body with delicacy and accuracy, under circumstances which would without this construction have rendered nice observation impossible. “Wherever you will find many men you will find many minds,” exclaimed a public speaker. “ Taint so, by jingo,” responded one of the auditors : “if you’d only ask this whole crowd out to take a drink, you’d find ’em all of one mind.” The lecturer ‘caved’ without trying the experiment. The dog constable at Dudley (Massachusetts) means business. His proclamation reads as follows By virtue of a warrant to me directed, dog-days will commence July 10, when all owners of clogs not licensed, resident of Dudley, will do well to call at the Town Clerk's office, as there will be a howling in the dog family after that date.”