The Youth's instructer [sic] and guardian

NEW BOOKS.

(Literary, Scientific, Educational.)

A NEW edition of the extraordinary Narrative of a Journey round the Dead Sea and in the Bible Lands, in 1850 and 1851, by M. DE SAULCY, (Bentley,) is just published, in two handsome octavo volumes. This work should have a careful perusal; and indeed it would be difficult to read it with indifference, in those parts where the author maintains his conviction that he has discovered the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah on the margin of the Dead Sea. This learned traveller ventured on ground almost untrodden by his predecessors in the "Bible Lands,", and certainly unexplored by all before him. Whatever may be thought of the identity of his ruins with those of the doomed cities of the Plain, there can be no doubt that he discovered, on a hill that overlooks the Valley of the Lake Semachonitis, the Cyclopian remains of a primitive city, and traced the form of a vast building, which he supposes to have been a Canaanitish temple. And he is confident that this is the ancient Hazor. De Sauley is now as necessary to a knowledge of the region of Jordan and the Dead Sea as Layard is to that of Nineveh. And the discoverer of Sodom and Gomorrah stands alone.

Most readers of popular works on natural history are familiar with the very instructive volumes of the late ROBERT MUDIE, of Chelsea. Mr. Bohn has done well in republishing his Feathered Tribes of the British Islands, which now appear in a fourth edition being two volumes of his Illustrated Library. The style is not in the slightest degree technical; and although there is a general classification into Gallinæ, Accipitres, Carnivore, Insectivoræ, and so on, that is all. The descriptions are full, characteristic, and written with the ease and zest of a White of Selborne, combined with the broader generalisations of Mudie himself.

Persons who are interested in Australian gold-digging may, for a shilling, obtain a comparative view of the geological characteristics of fourteen gold districts in as many sectional diagrams, finely coloured and gilded, with a Plan of the eastern portion of Australia. It is a Chart of the Australian Gold-Fields. (Collins.)

The Symmetry of Vegetation; an Outline of the Principles to be observed in the Delineation of Plants, by JOHN LINDLEY, Ph. D., F.R.S., (Chapman and Hall,) is distinguished by plain common sense, and intended to assist the learner in a truthful delineation of flowers and plants, especially in ornamental design.

Whitaker's Educational Register for 1854, (Whitaker,) although it comes out rather late, is not the less valuable as a Directory, with

copious information for the guidance of inquirers, concerning the Universities, Colleges, and Institutions, Foundation and Grammar Schools, Training Institutions, &c., &c. The principal Foreign Universities are also mentioned.

CELESTIAL OBJECTS.

APRIL, 1854.

"Tis night! O, now come forth to gaze
Upon the heavens intense and bright!
Look on yon myriad worlds, and say,
Though beauty dwelleth with the day,
Is not God manifest by night?

"Thou that createdst all! Thou fount

Of our Sun's light,-who dwellest far
From man beyond the farthest star,
Yet ever present; who dost heed
Our spirits in their human need,
We bless Thee, Father, that we are?

"We bless Thee for this bounteous earth;
For its increase,-for corn and wine;
For forest-oaks, for mountain-rills,
For cattle on a thousand hills;'
We bless Thee,-for all good is Thine.

"The earth is Thine,-Thy creature, man!
Thine are all worlds, all suns that shine:
Darkness and light, and life and death;
Whate'er all space inhabiteth,

Creator! Father! all are Thine."

ASTEROIDS. The constants which determine the form and magnitude of the orbits, and the actual motions of the planets in those orbits, have been explained: it remains to show how the positions of the orbits are determined.

All the orbits have one point in common, the centre of the Sun: two other given points in the plane of each orbit, not in a straight line from the Sun's centre, would fix the position. A more simple method, and that which is, in effect, used by astronomers, is to give the constants which determine a line passing through the Sun, perpendicular to the plane of the orbit. Imagine two other straight lines from the same point, at right angles respectively to the planes

of the ecliptic and equator, on the northern side. Planes passing through the normal, to the ecliptic and the other two normals, will intersect the ecliptic in straight lines. One of the angles contained by these lines is called the longitude of the ascending node, and is marked. The angle which the normal to the orbit makes with the normal to the ecliptic, is called the inclination of the orbit. The former angle may be easily shown to be equal to that contained by the intersections of two planes with the ecliptic; one the plane of the orbit, the other a plane through the Sun, parallel to the equator: the former intersection is called the line of the nodes. One of the angles which this line makes with the axis major of the orbit fully determines its position. It is the sum of this angle, and the longitude of the ascending node, which is called the longitude of the perihelion. It is given in the column π.

MERCURY is now receding from us. The distances on April 1st and May 1st are fifty-nine, and ninety-seven, millions of miles, respectively the form, therefore, varies from that of the Moon three days before the change to her form one day before the end of the third quarter. The apparent magnitude on April 1st is equal to that of a globe one-third of an inch, on May 1st one-fourth of an inch, in diameter, at a distance of two hundred yards. The right ascension of the planet diminishes till 8h. on the morning of the 5th, when it becomes 23h. 43m. 4s. ; after this time it increases. On the 6th, at 4h. in the morning, the planet will be in the plane of the Earth's orbit, going southward; that is, in descending node. At 8h. on the afternoon of the 23d he will be in the plane of the equator, going northward. His maximum of southern declination will be 2o 30', on the morning of the 11th. His greatest elongation from the Sun, 27° west, will be attained on the afternoon of the 20th. On the morning of the 24th he will be near the Moon, then within three days of her change.

VENUS is now a glorious object, though witnessed by fewer than when she adorned our evening sky. On the 5th she will be most brilliant her light will be twenty-two times that of Mars on the 16th. At this time her form will be that of the Moon five days before the change; her apparent magnitude that of a globe an inch and one third in diameter, at the distance of two hundred yards. After the 4th she will increase in right ascension, and rise in declination. On the morning of the 23d she will be near the Moon. About the 24th she passes from the constellation Aquarius into Pisces. On the 29th, at 2h. A.M., she will be in descending node.

Phenomena which we cannot see, but which may be witnessed by other beings, fellow-subjects of Him "who ruleth over all," may interest quite as much as those to which we have access. If the nearest neighbour of our own native planet has often suggested a

Seen from this planet Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars are almost in a straight line from the Sun, on the western side, in the order in which they are mentioned. The other three large planets are

eastward.

The distances of SATURN on the 1st of April and the 1st of May are 926 and 953 millions of miles, respectively. The latter is almost precisely ten times the mean distance of the Sun from the Earth: therefore, light, which passes over a distance equal to the circumference of the Earth in the eighth of a second, requires 1h. 23m. to pass to us from Saturn. His apparent diameter on the 16th is 15"; the axes of the ring, 38" and 16. The Sun and all the surrounding planets are, relatively to Saturn, southward of the plane of his ring, with the exception of Uranus, which is northward.

URANUS is approaching conjunction.

NEPTUNE is apparently receding from the Sun westward.

RISING AND SETTING OF THE SUN, FOR THE PARALLELS OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS.