THE TRANSIT OF VENUS

Abstract

A VERY fair amount of success appears from the telegrams to have attended the British expeditions for the observation of the late transit of Venus. In Jamaica Dr. Copeland and his colleague secured all four contacts; at Barbados Mr. Talmage, though he lost the first external contact, observed the other three; we have no intelligence yet from the station at Bermuda, occupied by Mr. Plummer, nor, of course, from the expedition on the west coast of Madagascar. At the Cape the observers were similarly favoured by the weather, and we hear of very successful observations in New Zealand by Colonel Tupman. The only regrettable failure was at Brisbane, whither Capt. Morris, R.E., had proceeded, with Mr. C. E. Peek. It had been at first the intention of the Committee of the Royal Society to send an expedition to the Falkland Islands, but on learning that other countries intended to occupy stations in that part of the globe, Brisbane was substituted with the view to strengthen the Australian stations, and, so to say, assist in counterbalancing the great number of observations that might be expected in the United States. At the Naval Observatory, Washington, all four contacts were observed with the principal instruments, as also at the Observatory of Haverford, near Philadelphia, and in due course we shall doubtless hear of many more American successes.