328 



General Monthly Meeting. 



[March 4, 



and hence the conclusion is drawn, that these metals — for instance, 

 silver, copper, zinc, aluminium, cobalt, lead, and antimony — do not 

 occur at all, or at any rate occur only in very small quantities in the 

 sun's atmosphere. 



The speaker said that he should not soon forget the impression 

 produced on his mind when visiting his friends in Heidelberg last 

 autumn, by seeing the splendid spectacle of the coincidence of the 

 bright lines of the iron spectrum with the dark solar lines. In the 

 lower half of the field of the telescope were at least seventy brilliant 

 iron lines of various colours, and of all degrees of intensity and of 

 breadth ; whilst in the upper half of the field, the solar spectrum, cut 

 up, as it were, by hundreds of dark lines, exhibited its steady light. 

 Situated exactly above each of the seventy bright iron lines was a dark 

 solar line. These lines did not only coincide with a degree of sharp- 

 ness and precision perfectly marvellous, but the intensity and breadth 

 of each bright line was so accurately preserved in its dark represen- 

 tative, that the truth of the assertion that iron was contained in the 

 sun, flashed upon the mind at once. 



The speaker concluded by remarking that these researches are still 

 in their earliest infancy ; that the dawn of a new stellar and terrestrial 

 chemistry has been announced, thus opening out for investigation a 

 bright prospect of vast fields of unexplored truth. 



[H. E. R.] 



GENERAL MONTHLY MEETING, 



Monday, March 4, 1861. 



William Pole, Esq. M.A. F.R.S. Treasurer and Vice-President, 



in the Chair. 



H.R.H. The Count of Paris. 



H.R.H. The Duke of Chartres. 



Wm. C. Baker, Esq. 



Henry Wollaston Blake, Esq. F.R.S, 



Charles Buxton, Esq. M.P. 



Charles Sedgfield Crowley, Esq. 



John Clerk, Esq. 



Henry Gueneau De Mussy, M.D. 



Joseph S. Earle, Esq. 



Sir Philip De Malpas Grey Egerton, 



Bart. M.P. F.R.S. 

 John Fleming, Esq. 



The Rev. Charles L. Forster, M.A. 



Richard Clewin Griffith, Esq 



Sir John Edward Harington, Bart. 



Alexander Mackintosh, Esq. 



William Nichols, Esq. B.A. 



Henry Alfred Pitman, M.D. 



Mrs. Fanny Pitman. 



W. H. Stone, Esq. 



Wm. E. M. Tomlinson, Esq. 



Thomas Harrington Tuke, M.D. 



John Waring, Esq. 



were elected Members of the Royal Institution. 



