THE large modern telescope, celestial photography, and improved astronomical instruments have opened the field of astronomy to such an extent that the ideas, statements, and figures of a few years ago are no longer authentic. Happily for the credit of astronomers, the wonders of the skies have been underestimated, and those who thought that statements that had been previously made regarding celestial wonders were almost beyond credence will be pleased to find that they were not only true, but that in reality not more than half the truth had been told.

NEGLECT hitherto of the availability of astronomy for a laboratory course has mainly led to the preparation of this New Astronomy. Written purely with a pedagogic purpose, insistence upon rightness of principles, no matter how simple, has everywhere been preferred to display of precision in result. To instance a single example : although the pupil's equipment be but a yardstick, a pinhole, and the l rule of three, 1 will he not reap greater benefit from measuring the sun for himself (page 259), than from learning mere detail of methods employed by astronomers in accurately measuring that luminary ?...

I HAVE written these pages, not for the professional reader, but with the hope of reaching a part of that educated public on whose support he is so often dependent for the means of extending the boundaries of knowledge.

It is not generally understood that among us not only the support of the Government, but with scarcely an exception every new private benefaction, is devoted to " the Old " Astronomy, which is relatively munificently endowed already ; while that which I have here called "the New," so fruitful in results of interest and importance, struggles almost unaided.

IN the present edition the Author has adapted the rules not only to the Tables of Dr. Inman (the most comprehensive and useful yet published), but also to those in more general use, such as Riddle's, Norie's, &c. The student will therefore find now no difficulty in working out the examples contained in the book by any of the above tables, In the last edition of the Author's work on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, rules are also given depending on the common tables of sines, &c,, as well as on the table of haversines contained in Inman's Tables.

THE chief charm of Astronomy, with many, does not reside in the wonders revealed to us by the science, but in the lore and legends connected with its history, the strange fancies with which in old times it has been associated, the half-forgotten myths to which it has given birth. In our own times also, Astronomy has had its myths and fancies, its wild inventions, and startling paradoxes. My object in the present series of papers has been to collect together the most interesting of these old and new Astronomical myths, associating with them, in due proportion, some of the chief marvels which recent Astronomy has revealed to us. To the former class belong the subjects of the first four and the last five essays of the present series, while the remaining essays belong to the latter category.

MANY able and cultured writers in expatiating on the poetic genius of Milton have favoured us with elegant dissertations appreciative of the charm and sublimity of his harmonious verse. But, in discoursing on Milton's astronomy, the Author has ventured to contribute a volume, to some extent based upon an earlier work devoted to the same subject, which, whilst containing a new interpretation of certain passages in the ' Paradise Lost/ and upholding views differing from those expressed by the ablest commentators, may yet, he hopes, be interesting and instructive to the general reader. Perhaps the choicest passages in Milton's poems are associated with astronomical allusion, and it is chiefly to the exposition and illustration of these that this volume is devoted.

ARISTOTLE and other ancient writers regarded comets as meteors generated in the atmosphere. This opinion was generally accepted, even by the learned, until the observations of Tycho, near the close of the sixteenth century, showed those mysterious objects to be more distant than the moon, thus raising them to the dignity of celestial bodies. An achievement somewhat similar, and certainly no less interesting, was reserved for the astronomers of the nineteenth century. This was the great discovery that shooting- stars, Jire-balls, and meteoric stones, are, like comets, cosmical bodies moving in conic sections about the sun. DR. H ALLEY was the first to foretell the return of a comet, and the year 1159 will ever be known in history as that which witnessed the fulfillment of his prophecy.