1864. | Astronomy. 663 
to defy every attempt to describe them by any one appellation. Upon 
more quiet and perfect view of these granulations, it appears that they 
are not individual and separate bodies of a peculiar nature, but only 
different conditions as to brightness or elevation of the larger masses 
forming the mottled surface. Between the granules the shaded por- 
tions are in many places pretty thickly covered with dark dots like 
stippling with a soft lead pencil, but he was struck with the extreme 
rarity of a long and narrow shape among the granules with which the 
surface of the sun is covered. They may perhaps be sometimes com- 
pressed into a longer form under the influence of the same forces 
which produce the longer threads or straws on the penumbra, but one 
of the most striking features is the entire absence of uniformity in the 
brighter portions with respect both to their size and shape. Mr. 
Dawes further said, that one of the most remarkable things connected 
with the matter, was that whereas these granules, or “rice grains,” 
were easily seen,—a small telescope with a power of 40 or 50 bringing 
them into view,—Mr. Nasmyth should have accepted them as his 
** willow-leaves,” which he says are so difficult to see with an 8-inch 
aperture. Mr. C. G. Talmage confirmed Mr. Dawes’s statement. 
Since 1861, he had most carefully scrutinized the surface of the sun 
both at Nice, at Paris, and in England, with 4-inch, 6-inch, and 8-inch 
object-glasses with powers up to 500, but had never seen the slightest 
trace of “ willow-leaves,” “rice grains,” or “thatch.” In the discus- 
sion which followed the reading of these papers, Dr. De la Rue re- 
marked, that it is to the sun himself and to other observers that the 
confirmation or non-confirmation of Mr. Nasmyth’s discovery must be 
left; he himself maintained, notwithstanding what had fallen from 
other astronomers, that it was a substantial discovery. 
At the end of last year the assistant-secretary of the Society, Mr. 
Williams, gave an abstract of the record of thirty-six eclipses in the 
Chinese historical work called ‘Chun Ten.’ Mr. Williams had con- 
verted the Chinese dates into dates according to the Julian calendar. 
The Astronomer-Royal has lately compared the ‘ Chun Tsen’ eclipses 
with those calculated in the French work entitled ‘ L’Art de Vérifier 
des Dates,’ and he finds that, of the thirty-six eclipses, thirty-two 
agree with the computations of modern theory, whilst in the remaining 
four it is very probable that there is an error in the Chinese record. 
Some very important notes on the binary star, « Centauri, are 
given by Mr. EH. B. Powell. He invites attention to the important 
portion of the orbit now about to be described, viz. the part in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the lesser maximum of distance. If this 
maximum be accurately determined, one most prominent feature in the 
path will be fixed; and then, as the companion will revolve with con- 
tinually increasing rapidity till its distance from the primary dimin- 
ishes to 1” or less, a really excellent orbit will be calculable in 1870 
or thereabouts. Now that so much discussion is going on respecting 
the changes which are supposed to have taken place in nebule, it may 
be of interest to record that Mr. Powell considers that decided changes 
have taken place in the nebula about 7 Argus. In 1860, the whole 
nebula had faded away very considerably, and it had altered its form, 
