42 ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. (BRITISH.) 



tary of the Council, Thomas H. Norton, Cincin 

 nati, Ohio. Secretaries of Sections : A, Winslow 

 Upton, Providence, R. I. ; B, Brown Ayres, New 

 Orleans, La. ; C, James L. Howe, Louisville, Ky. ; 

 D, Olin H. Landreth, Nashville, Tenn. ; E, 

 Rollin D. Salisbury, Madison, Wis. ; F, Byron D. 

 Halstead, New Brunswick, N. J. ; H. Anthropol- 

 oy, Stewart Culin, Philadelphia, Pa. ; I, Lester 

 F. Ward, Washington, D. C. Treasurer, William 

 Lilly, Mauch Chunk, Pa. 



British. The sixty-first annual meeting of 

 the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science was held in Cardiff during the week be- 

 ginning Aug. 19. The officers of the association 

 were : President, Dr. William Huggins. Section 



WILLIAM HUGGINS. 



Presidents : A, Mathematics and Physics, Oliver 

 J. Lodge ; B, Chemistry, W. C. Roberts- Austen ; 

 C, Geology, T. Rupert Jones ; D, Biology, Fran- 

 cis Darwin ; E, Geography, E. G. Rowenstein ; 

 F, Economic Science and Statistics, W, Cunning- 

 ham ; G, Mechanical Science, T. Forster Brown ; 

 H, Anthropology, Max Miiller. General Treas- 

 urer, Arthur Riicker. General Secretaries : Sir 

 Douglas Galton and Vernon Harcourt ; and 

 Thomas Forster Brown., Chairman of the Local 

 Executive Committee. 



General Meeting. The first general meeting 

 was held on Aug. 19, with Sir Frederick A. Abel 

 in the chair. The address of welcome was made 

 by the Marquis of Bute, who was chairman of 

 the Local Committee and Mayor of Cardiff. The 

 report of the General Committee was presented 

 and accepted, subsequent to which the incoming 

 president, Dr. William Huggins, was called to 

 the chair. His address was delivered in the 

 evening in Park Hall. 



Address of the President. Since 1851, 

 when Sir George Airy, and 1860, when Lord 

 Wrottesley, were presidents of the association, 

 no representative of astronomy had been chosen 

 to that office. It was therefore natural that Dr. 

 Huggins should select as the subject of his dis- 

 course the history of the discoveries that have 

 taken place in his chosen science during the past 

 thirty years. He told how spectroscopic astron- 

 omy had become a distinct and acknowledged 

 branch of that science. Withiilthe last year or 

 two improvements had been made in the spec- 



troscope itself by Lord Rayleigh, and by Prof. 

 Henry A. Rowland in the construction of con- 

 cave gratings. Although up to the present time 

 Angstrom's map of the solar spectrum has been 

 accepted as the standard of reference, still, in the 

 near future, that of Rowland will be adopted, and 

 its greater accuracy is due chiefly to the introduc- 

 tion by him of concave gratings and of a method 

 for their use by which the problem of the deter- 

 mination of relative wave lengths is simplified to 

 measures of coincidences of the lines in different 

 spectra by a micrometer. The recent attempts 

 to distinguish the lines which are due to our at- 

 mosphere from those which are truly solar were 

 described. Concerning the nature of the heav- 

 enly bodies, all that can be positively asserted 

 is, that the spectroscope reveals to us the waves 

 which were set up in the ether, filling all inter- 

 stellar space, years or hundreds of years ago, by 

 the motions of the molecules of the celestial sub- 

 stances. Great caution must be observed when 

 attempts are made to reason by the aid of labora- 

 tory experiments as to the temperature of the 

 heavenly bodies. Of recent researches in this di- 

 rection, "the claim of Stas that electric spectra are 

 to be regarded as distinct from flame spectra was 

 mentioned, but it must not be forgotten that the 

 light from the heaVenly bodies may consist of 

 the combined radiations of different layers of 

 gas at different temperatures, and possibly be 

 further complicated to an unknown extent by 

 the absorption of cooler portions of gas outside. 



As yet the spectroscope has failed to interpret 

 for us the remarkable spectrum of the aurora 

 borealis. Undoubtedly in this phenomenon por- 

 tions of our atmosphere are lighted up by elec- 

 tric discharges ; we should expect, therefore, to 

 recognize the spectra of the gases known to be 

 present in it. Especially we do not know the 

 origin of the principal line in the green. Re- 

 cently the suggestion has been made that the 

 aurora is a phenomenon produced by the dust of 

 meteors and falling stars, and that near positions 

 of certain auroral lines or flutings of manganese, 

 lead, barium, thallium, iron, etc., are sufficient to 

 justify us in regarding meteoric dust in the at- 

 mosphere as the origin of the auroral spectrum. 



Reference was made to the work on the " Spec- 

 tra of the Comets," by Prof. Hubert A. Newton 

 and Prof. Schiaparelli. Concerning the consti- 

 tution of the sun, a very great advance has been 

 made by the recent work at the Johns Hopkins 

 University, by means of photography and con- 

 cave gratings, in comparing the solar spectrum 

 directly with the spectra of the terrestrial ele- 

 ments. Prof. Rowland has shown that the lines 

 of thirty-six terrestrial elements at least are cer- 

 tainly present in the solar spectrum, while eight 

 others are doubtful. Of those not found, many 

 are so classed because they have few strong lines, 

 or none at all, in the limit of the solar spectrum 

 as compared by him with the arc. Rowland has 

 not found any lines common to several elements, 

 and. in the case of some accidental coincidences, 

 more accurate investigation reveals some slight 

 difference of wave length or a common impurity. 

 Stas, in a recent paper, gives the final results oi 

 eleven years of research on the chemical elements 

 in a state of purity, and on the possibility of de- 

 composing them by the physical and chemical 

 forces at our disposal. His experiments on cal- 



