XII NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 



ours, as ours does that of the wallowing reptiles which once held 

 possession of this planet." 



In an essay *' on the origin of mankind," Dr. Haeckel gives his 

 reasons for inferring that man has come into being by a process 

 of development from the lower animals; and he regards the 

 *' Lamarck-Darwin " hypothesis as precisely equivalent to that of 

 the "Copernicus-Newton" system of astronomy; for, while the 

 latter proved the error of the old geocentric system, the former 

 shows the falsity of the anthropocentric belief that looks upon man 

 as the centre of an animate world created only to supply his 

 wants. 



The remarkable eclipse of the sun, of August 17 was faithfully 

 observed by astronomers sent by England and France to India, 

 and also by resident astronomers there, as very important ques- 

 tions in solar physics were to be settled by their observations. 

 From spectroscopic examinations during the eclipse, the red pro- 

 tuberances of the sun were, by universal admission, shown to be 

 gaseous in their nature. The comets of the year, and especially 

 Brorsen's, have also been submitted to the spectroscope by Mr. 

 Huggins, Father Secchi, and others, and have been found to have 

 spectra like that of carbon, — a most interesting fact ; these bodies 

 are consequently believed to shine not merely by reflected solar 

 light, but to be self-luminous. 



In regard to the statements of Mr. Abbott, regarding the 

 changes in the figure and aspect of the nebula round t^ Argus, not 

 only in the luminosity of the nebula but in the arrangement of the 

 nebulous masses and of the fixed stars strewn over the nebula. 

 Sir J. Ilerschel says, in " Proc. Royal Astronomical Society, 

 1868," *' There is no phenomenon in nebulous or sidereal astronomy 

 presenting anything like the interest of this, or calculated to raise 

 so many and such momentous points for inquiry and speculation. 

 The question here is not one of minute variations in subordinate 

 features, which may or may not be attributable to differences of 

 optical power in the instruments used by different observers, as in 

 the case of the nebula in Orion, but of a total change of form and 

 character, a complete subversion of all the greatest and most 

 striking features — accompanied with an amount of relative move- 

 ment between the star and the nebula, and of the brighter portions 

 of the latter inter se, which reminds us more of the capricious 

 changes of form and place in a cloud drifted by the wind, than of 

 anything heretofore witnessed in the sidereal heavens." 

 The wonderful revelations of the spectroscope are gradually'' 



