INAUGURAL ADDRESS, if 
In recent days many surprising and momentous discoveries 
were witnessed, but few can be alluded to here. Among those, 
which have a practical and extensive bearing on daily require- 
ments, some originated or were evolved through the genius of 
Edison, from whom, as one yet in the prime of life, still other 
inventions may be expected. Here I will refer only to that mode 
of luminosity, which may be regarded as much cosmic as telluric, 
and which now is brought within wide technical operation 
through particularly disintegrated coal glowing in absolute 
vacuum—not without some previous suggestions and experiments 
by Sidot and Swan, 
So also is it startling, to hear the human voice now with 
telephonic celerity across a whole country, and hardly impaired in 
intensity. Through the combination of Gray’s or Bell’s telephone, 
with Edison’s phonograph, messages can be fixed—as you may 
be aware—in writing ; while, by Hughes’s microphone, the sound 
can be heard with extraordinary distinctness. 
Nations are now rivalling to possess the largest telescope, 
Melbourne still carrying the palm for the southern hemisphere. 
Indeed, the great equatorial instrument here, with its four feet 
mirror, is surpassed only by that of Lord Rosse, and equalled 
only by that of Paris. Astronomy became lately in wondrous 
details connected with astrophysics and astrophotography. The 
astronomic department here, under our distinguished treasurer, 
Colonel Ellery’s able administration, will extensively share also 
in the now commencing international photographic charting of 
the sidereal heavens. A gigantic refractor-telescope has been placed 
in the clearest of air at one of the culminations, 4600 feet high, of 
the Californian coast-range by a generous American mining 
operator and amateur-astronomer, on whom fortune had smiled ; 
and thus within the last year or two were revealed some empyrean 
marvels, never beheld by mortal eye before ; the nebular ring in 
Lyra presented quite new and complicated features, and additional 
stars at or near the cyclic aggregations were discovered by the 
astronomers of _Mount Hamilton, Professors Holden and 
Schaeberle. Here may be alluded to only one other result of 
these observers, attained under so exceptionally favourable cir- 
cumstances within their celestial area, namely the elliptic nebula 
of Draco, with its fulgent hydrogen and nitrogen, is now shown 
to consist of coiled rings. New planetoids may thus also from 
thence come within the range of vision, eight having been 
observed from elsewhere on the northern heaven during 1888 and 
at the beginning of 1889, thus bringing recorded numbers up to 
283. The power, which would be exercised by very large tele- 
scopes placed within the tropics at alpine elevations above the 
frequent course of clouds in air so much rarified, may be beyond 
all present imagination. More “about the comets, as supposed 
meteor-swarms, which have entered the solar system,” might 
