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science so fascinating, so engrossing as astronomy ; none in which 
the sober statement of facts appeals so strongly to the imagination, 
and which excites alike our curiosity and awe, our wonder and our 
reverence. No other science enables us to realise so vividly the 
almost boundless powers of the human mind, while, at the same 
time it impresses upon us our own littleness as compared with the 
ilimitable vastness of the universe and its myriad worlds. 
At the meeting of the British Association last year, Professor 
Higgins, in his brilliant inaugural address, enlarged upon the 
marvels of astronomy as revealed by the spectroscope, one of 
the grandest inventions of this century. After alluding to the birth 
of the spectroscope at Heidelberg in 1859, Professor Higgins pointed 
out some of the most brilliantresults accruing from its use, by no 
means the least being the part :t has played in astronomical photo- 
graphy. Indeed, since the appearance of Virchoff’s great work on 
the solar spectrum and the interpretation of its lines, a rich harvest of 
results has been gathered by scientific workers. What the telescope 
was to Galileo the spectroscope is to the modern astronomer; the 
telescope brought near what was remote, but the spectroscope, which 
takes no note of distance, reveals movements amongthe heavenly 
bodies which the telescope could not detect ; these are,in their turn, 
seized by the gelatine dry plate of the camera, and permanently 
recorded. The value of these astronomical photographs can hardly 
be over-estimated ; they are immeasurably superior to the best hand 
drawings for this reason, that they are absolutely free from any 
individual bias and have no “theory” to maintain. Valuable as 
are the drawings of such men as the Herschells, Beer, Midler and 
others, they are still marred to some extent by the partiality of the 
respective draughtsmen to some pet theory. Since the introduction 
of the gelatine dry plate, a great impetus has been given to this 
branch of photography ; whatithe photographic plate sees it records, 
nay more, it observes and discloses what the more finite vision of the 
astronomer fails to detect. The eye fails to perceive any object 
which is too faintly luminous to be seen at the first and keenest 
moment of vision, whereas the light which falls on the photo- 
- graphic plate is continually being taken in and stored up, so that 
each hour it receives three thousand six hundred times as much 
light as in the first second. 
Perhaps the most memorable event of the past year hxs been the 
- the commencement of the great photographic chart and catalogue 
of the Heavens, the idea of which was first mooted at the Paris 
International Conference in 1887. Eighteen observatories have 
been engaged for the last three years in the preliminary arrange- 
ments and experiments, and the time has been found none too long 
for preparing the special instruments for this great work, which 
