president's address — SECTION A. 95 



and Airy, and Young, and Janssen, and Lockyer, and a host of 

 others, all battling with the overpowering light of day in order to 

 win the secret that it hides, winning bit by bit of the difficult way 

 until siiccess is attained. 



With such a record of unexpected successes in the past, and so 

 much more that is possible now. it would he folly to attempt to 

 forecast what another ten years Avill bring forth. Es'er3-thing points 

 to an enormous increase in the details of the known, and to at 

 least an equally great advance into the unknown. Photographs 

 taken three j'ears ago filled the durk places of the southern Milky 

 Way with stars, ami brought at least strong evidence that they 

 have grouping exactly resembling the Milky Way near them — a sort 

 of family likeness which cannot be mi>taken. This year some 

 Milky Way spaces taken with the camera of 1890 have been 

 probed by the large star camera, and it may be mentioned, as a 

 measure of the difiereuce of the two instruments, that a well-defined 

 but small space which in the 1890 photograph contains eighty 

 stars, is found in the 1893 photograph to have fourteen times as 

 many stars, or 1166. Now it is possible to-day to get a camera 

 made ten times as powerful as those in use, and there is a talk, and 

 one may say a probability, that in the very near future one will be 

 made a hundred times more powerful. Moreover, the experience 

 of the past has been that the limit in power of the telescope of one 

 age is not the limit of the next. There has been a gradual expansion 

 in the arts, which the astronomer has taken advantage of, and there 

 is every reason to suppose this will continue in the future to an 

 extent of which we can form no estimate. One is tempted to ask — 

 Will the star depths unfold in the same ratio ? And the reply comes 

 in the words of the German poet — " Other worlds more billowy, 

 other heights and other depths are coming, are neariug, are at hand ; 

 for end there is none to the Universe of God I" 



NOTES. 



1. Miss Gierke : System of the Stars, p. 23. 



2. Nature, vol. x., p. 243. Quarterly Journal Science, toI. i., p. 381. 



3. Nature, vol. xliv., p. 380. 



4. Nature, vol. xlii., p. 568 ; also Observatory, vol. ii., p. 13. 



5. Chamber's Astronomy, third edition, p. 708. 



6. An Investigation into Stellar PhotOE^raphy, vol. x!., North American Academy of 



7. Astron. Nachrichten, No. 1105. 



8. Phil. Trans., 1862, p. 333. 



9. British Association Report, 1859, p. 134, et seq.; also Astronomical Register, 



p. 65. 



10. British Association Report, 1853, p. 15. 



11. British Association Kep .rt, 1854, p. 66 ; also .\stronomical Register, lb63, p. 65. 



12. Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices, vol. sv., p. 132. 



13. Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices, vol. xv., pp. 140 and 158. 



14. This was the second time, see Cape Ohseryations, p. 435, foot note. 



15. British Association Report, 1854, p. 10. 



16. Quarterly Journal of Science, 1864, pu. 381 and 384. 

 17 Quarterly Journal of Science, 1864, p. .382. 





