Will be morning star throughout the month, moving eastwardly 1° 40′ 45″; diameter increasing about one-tenth of a second. On the 8th, at 3:00 a. m. will be 1° 10′ south of Mercury; on the 16th, at 7:19 p. m., 2° 5′ north of the moon. Its times of rising are as follows: On the 1st, 5:13 a. m.; on the 16th, 4:19 a. m.; on the 31st, 3:24 a. m. NEPTUNE’S Motion for the month is 44′ 22″ retrograde; diameter, 2.6″. On the 7th, at 11:44 a. m., he is 1° 33′ north of the moon. His night ascension on the 31st is 3h. 21m. 23.5s., and declination 16° 36′ north, about 1h. 8m. west of _Aldebaran_ in the constellation _Taurus_. He rises on the 1st, at 7:38; on the 16th, at 6:39, and on the 31st, at 5:39 p. m. THE MERCIFUL INSTITUTIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA. BY PROF. CHAS. J. LITTLE, PH.D., State Librarian of Pennsylvania. The State of Pennsylvania makes generous provision for her poor—or, since one half of the inmates of her alms-houses are foreign born, it will be better to say, for the poor within her borders. In the twenty counties of the state in which there are no alms-houses, and where the poor are cared for under the township system, there are expended perhaps $300,000 annually. How the poor are cared for under this wretched system, it were perhaps better not to inquire too curiously. In the remaining counties of the state there are sixty-one alms-houses, the total cost of maintaining which amounted in the year 1883 to $1,296,945. In addition to this sum, these same counties spend a quarter of a million of dollars in what is called “out-door relief.” Much of this latter expenditure is, judging from the report of the Commissioners of Public Charities, sheer waste. These sixty-one alms-houses of the state shelter 8,630 inmates, of whom 2,328 are women, and 1,024 children. In the year 1883, 1,739 inmates of the alms-houses were reported insane. By act of the last legislature children over two years of age are excluded from the county alms-houses, and insane persons are ordered to be removed to the state hospitals. Unfortunately, the legislature neglected to appropriate the money necessary to carrying out this reform, and as a consequence, there has been serious trouble, and probably not a little suffering throughout the state. It would not do to speak of all these sixty-one alms-houses as merciful institutions. Some of them are branded by the Commissioners of Public Charities as abodes of cruelty; others, as breeding places of vice and immorality; others still as utterly inadequate, both in building and management, to the purposes of their existence. Among those thus branded are the alms-houses of two of the richest counties of the state—Chester and Cumberland. On the other hand, many of these institutions are worthy of all praise, the taxpayers having spared no expense in the erection and equipment of the buildings, and the management being intrusted to conscientious men and women.