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in 1803, the other drawn in February 1868. Neither of these 

 pictures resembles my drawing of 1834-8 in the slightest degree, 

 nor do the two pictures in any way resemble each other, and 

 Mr. Abbott remarks that a series of drawings taken at 

 comparatively short intervals of time would afford even stronger 

 evidence of the mutability; this is very strange, no phenomenon 

 in nebulous or sidereal astronomy as yet ever turned up like 

 this, and it must be settled." 



Sir J. Herschel clearly supposes by these remarks, that my 

 drawings are meant to indicate the true arrangement of the 

 stars. He has been at great pains to try all possible means of 

 reconciling his own splendid drawing of the Nebula with mine, 

 so far as the distribution of the stars is concerned, but without 

 being able to find a situation of the tracing paper, in which 

 any tolerable coincidence of the stars in the two drawings 

 could be noticed. 



Lieutenant Herschel, Sir John's son, was sent out to India 

 at the head of a party of scientific men to observe the great 

 eclipse of August 18th, and was fully commissioned to settle 

 in some way the nature of the capricious changes recorded 

 of this object; how he succeeded can be seen by a comparison 

 of his drawings with my own, and that of the Cape Monograph, 

 now lying on the table. On the receipt of these drawings 

 Admiral Manners, President of the Royal Astronomical Society, 

 thought that Lieut. Herschel had not sufficient instrumental 

 means at his disposal to settle the question. 



The first object to be examined with the large Melbourne 

 reflector was the Nebula in Argus, in reference to which Gen. 

 Sabine, in his recent address to the Royal Society, regrets the 

 temporary failure of that telescope from some cause or other not 

 clearly known, but reminds the Society that it has been able to 

 show some of the changes recorded in the Nebula of Argus. 



These preliminary remarks will tend to show the present 

 meeting a part of the interest excited by my last remittance 

 to the Royal Astronomical Society on the subject, and I think 

 the present paper and drawing will tend to set all doubts as 

 to the fluctuations that have already taken place at rest. 



The severe critical remarks of Sir John Herschel on the 

 drawing and notes of 1868 were made with a view of dis- 

 proving that which I never intended to prove, viz., a correct 

 measurement of the distance applied to all the stars in the 

 field of the telescope ; this in all probability arose from my 

 not having expressed myself with sufficient clearness in my 

 remarks on the drawing which acconipanied the observations. 

 In this way the road to truth often runs through the midst 

 of error, but that does not in any way alter the fact that changes 

 have been, and still are taking place in the object— such 



