Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/773

Rh regular magnetic observations have been maintained; time-signals are sent all over the kingdom daily, and time-balls are dropped from points such that outgoing ships may see them plainly, and thus regulate their chronometers to Greenwich time on the eve of their departure for sea, and multitudes of chronometers have been tested, purchased, rated, and distributed to seagoing vessels and to scientific expeditions. Meteorological phenomena have been scrupulously registered by approved methods.

Extended experiments on the attraction of mountain-masses were made by Maskelyne, and Airy's Haston-Colliery pendulum experiment is too well known to require more than a mention. Constant assistance has been given to the Government in the training of observers for the transit of Venus, for boundary and other surveys, and for comparison and determination of standards of length, and in many other ways, which the Astronomer Royal does not recount in this Report, but which are well known. His own researches on the theories of the moon and planets, and on scores of allied topics, have made the observatory known throughout the world.

True to the traditions which have brought Greenwich its great success, the Astronomer Royal reiterates in this Report the importance of holding fast to "the fundamental idea—"that of meridional observations; and he indicates that if the force of the observatory must be reduced, that reduction should take place in the photographic and spectroscopic work. He says truly that "the [Royal] Observatory is not the place for new physical investigations," but that it is "well adapted for following out any which . . . have been reduced to laws susceptible of verification by daily observation." He lays down once more and very plainly the principles which have guided him in his long series of useful and honorable labors, and it is well worth the while of all who are interested in astronomy to read this concise expression of them.

We see a new example of how much useful and valuable work may be done in science by the mere force of persistent effort in the right direction, and this is a lesson which America needs to take well to heart. By virtue of attention to it, Greenwich can claim that what Delambre said years ago is now doubly true—that if by some great revolution the sciences had perished, while the collection of Greenwich observations alone, with a few methods of calculation, had survived the general wreck, there would still remain sufficient materials for reconstructing the whole edifice of astronomical science.

follow with interest the traveler who describes countries and peoples not familiar to us. For this reason we are pleased with Judge Caton's volume, which presents to us a series of pictures, sometimes vividly drawn, of scenery and life on the coast of Norway. His route was from Aalesund, a seaport town in Southern Norway, to Hammerfest, which is more than four degrees within the Arctic Circle, and is the most northerly town in Europe. He also gives an interesting account of a visit to North Cape, made by some traveling companions.

The journey of Judge Caton and his party was by steamers, and nearly all the way among the rocky islands which line the coast. That which seems to have most impressed the party was the perpetual presence of daylight. Day after day the midnight came, but no darkness. This, which was at first pleasing from its novelty, became excessively wearisome before the journey was ended.

The steamer made frequent stops along the coast, but nowhere came alongside the docks to discharge and receive passengers and freight. All this must be done by small boats. The author thought that the most stupid thing he saw in Norway.

Fishing is the principal business of the coast inhabitants the principal season for cod being in February and March. The rocks were in many places covered with these fish drying for market, or else piled