ASTRONOMY AND METEOROLOGY. 363 



presents in the six-feet a most intricate group of spiral ones, disposed 

 round two starry centres, looking like the visage of a monkey. 

 Among the new ones are H. 2,241. It is a ring of stars, with faint 

 nebulre within, and a fine double star near its edges: H. 2,075 of the 

 same kind, but with a bright star almost exactly central, and nine 

 others round it, evidently part of the same group. H. 450 is a most 

 extraordinary object ; the ring exactly circular, its light mottled and 

 flickering, and within it what is evidently a globular cluster. Scarcely 

 less surprising, but more magnificent from its association, is the plane- 

 tan- nebulas at the edge of M. 46, which he had seen, though in a 

 night not so favorable as that must have been when the drawing was 

 made. It is a resolvable double ring, or rather spiral, with a centre 

 star ; and from the improbability of two objects so rare as a splendid 

 cluster, and one of their compound rings being casually connected, it 

 seems reasonable to think they constitute one system. The double star 

 t, Orionis belongs also to this class ; and he called attention to the abso- 

 lute darkness of the aperture in the nebulas round the two stars, and 

 that the larger of them was at its edge, instead of being central. He ar- 

 gued from the remarkable difference between these objects as seen in 

 the telescopes of Lord Rosse (even the three-feet) and those of pre- 

 vious observers, how desirable it is that a complete review of the 

 nebulas should be made without loss of tune. Even now much labor 

 and talent were expended in theorizing on the imperfect data given 

 by instruments which, though matchless in their time, have now been 

 surpassed. Among others, he directed the notice of the Section to 

 H. 602, where the two clusters and the associated spirals are propelled 

 into ellipses; to H. 2,205, in which the long, resolved ray, being 

 the most intense, was alone seen by Herschel, but the magnificent 

 spirals and their central stars escaped him. M. 65, and H. 857, appear 

 to be helices seen obliquely. But the most curious one is M. 33, of 

 which the centre is a triple star disposed as an equilateral triangle 

 among a mass of smaller stars, from which proceed eight or nine spi- 

 rals, and round all is an enormous nebula, in which hoAvever no spiral 

 character had yet been traced. There were several examples of 

 another singular system nebulas streaked with dark bands ; such, 

 Bond discovered in the great nebula of Andromeda, H. 399, a w T isp ; 

 H. 1,393, a long ray of most marvellous appearance; II. 218, an 

 oblique, with srxteen or seventeen dark transverse stripes ; and H. 315, 

 having in the nebula a cluster nearly insulated by offsets from the 

 broad, curved, dark band, are among the most surprising. But the 

 number of these curious objects was so great that their time would 

 only permit him to invite their notice to H. 1,052 and 1,053, where the 

 cause of spirality had been interrupted by some other forces that bent 

 the system at a right angle and drew the nebula into a straight ray ; to 

 H. 444, a double-resolved nebula inclosed in a large and faint oval 

 ring ; and above all to M. 27, the " Dumb-bell" nebula as shown by 

 the six-feet, with its brilliant two clusters of comparatively large stars, 

 its dark bands, and the faint range which surround it, differing even 

 more from the picture of the three-feet than that does from the figure 

 of Herschel. 



