EDITOR'S TABLE. 



269 



aging by contrast with the manner in 

 which the powers of some great tele- 

 scopes have been misappUed and frit- 

 tered away. There are some astrono- 

 mers who seem to be fearful of nothing 

 so much as that they may be suspected 

 of having done, or said, or seen some- 

 thing interesting. Prof. Holden does 

 not belong in that category, and it is 

 exceedingly gratifying to know that the 

 most powerful telescope on our planet 

 is in the hands of a man w^ho will use it 

 for the broadening of our knowledge of 

 the universe, even at the risk of con- 

 tributing to the fund of " popular " in- 

 formation. 



The discoveries that Prof. Holden 

 has already announced to the world, in 

 the few months since the Lick telescope 

 was first turned upon the sky, are of 

 surpassing interest. We note first the 

 observations of nebula, and particularly 

 of the well-known " ring nebula " in 

 Lyra, one of the most attractive of celes- 

 tial objects even with a telescope of 

 moderate size. In that singular creation 

 Prof. Holden has discovered a marvel- 

 ous coexistence of rings of stars and 

 nebular ovals, evidently intimately re- 

 lated to one another in a manner that 

 is in the highest degree significant. 

 Then, too, in the nebula known as 37 H 4 

 in the constellation Draco, Prof. Holden 

 and one of his assistants, Mr. Schaeberle, 

 appear to have discovered a phenomenon 

 of an entirely new order. There a cen- 

 tral star is surrounded by ovals of nebular 

 matter which have assumed the form of a 

 helix, and Prof. Holden himself suggests 

 that this spiral or screw-shaped forma- 

 tion appears to have resulted from the 

 emanation of the nebulous stuff from a 

 body that was revolving around the cen- 

 tral star while that star itself was moving 

 swiftly through space. His observations 

 promise to make us acquainted with 

 other objects belonging to this same 

 mysterious class. 



The director of the Lick Observatory 

 has not scorned to apply its powers to 

 the scrutiny of the well-worn and fa- 



miliar features of the dead and barren 

 moon, and there too he has found some- 

 thing new and interesting. He believes 

 he has solved the mystery of Sir William 

 Herschel's lunar volcanoes, which that 

 great observer imagined he had actually 

 beheld in fiery eruption. 



Some of the most interesting astro- 

 nomical discoveries of recent years re- 

 late to the planet Mars, and foremost 

 are the observations of Schiaparelli, of 

 Milan, on those curious features of the 

 planet's disk which have been called, 

 from their form and their apparent con- 

 nection with the Martian seas, " canals," 

 Last summer Perrotin, of Nice, an- 

 nounced that one of the Martian conti- 

 nents named Libya had apparently been 

 inundated by a neighboring sea. N"ot a 

 few astronomers have doubted the ex- 

 istence of these comparatively minute 

 markings and changes upon Mars, be- 

 cause they could not see them them- 

 selves. But Prof. Holden and his assist- 

 ants turned the monster telescope upon 

 Mars with the most interesting results. 

 They confirmed the existence of Schiapa- 

 relli's " canals," though they did not see 

 any of them double (doubtless owing to 

 unfavorable conditions), and they found 

 that Libya was still there, unsubmerged. 

 These observations were made some 

 months after those of M. Perrotin ; and 

 Prof. Holden suggests that the partial 

 disappearance of Libya, which Perrotin 

 ascribed to an inundation, may have 

 been due rather to some such phenome- 

 non as a veil of clouds in the atmosphere 

 of Mars. At any rate, what were sup- 

 posed to be such cloud-masses have pre- 

 viously been observed on Mars. 



We have called attention to these 

 various observations in order to show 

 in what manner the Lick telescope is 

 being used, as well as to indicate briefly 

 some of the results already attained. 

 We congratulate Prof. Holden and the 

 Hniversity of California upon the splen- 

 did success of this great astronomical 

 enterprise. The spirit of James Lick, 

 if it can comprehend terrestrial doings 



