1862.] 109 



when the observer has really nothing to do but keep his eye at the 

 telescope. 



We have passed through what was called, for this climate, an 

 unusually cloudy winter, and it is only now that the weather is be- 

 coming settled for the summer, and only now that I may be said to be 

 entering upon regular work. I have indeed carefully observed some 

 of Lord Rosse's nebulae, and in at least two or three instances can 

 fully confirm the spiral character attributed to them by his Lordship, 

 not, I think, when the objects are well seen, to be overlooked, even 

 when the mind is not previously possessed with the idea. I am 

 making careful drawings of these nebulae as I see them, some of 

 which closely resemble Lord Rosse's, while others are so different 

 as to suggest (with the fact of the lost nebula in our remembrance) 

 the idea of a real change of form. With new objects, however, of so 

 much delicacy it is necessary to survey them again and again, under 

 different circumstances, in order to arrive at a trustworthy conclusion. 



One object, on which I scarcely intended to bestow any attention, 

 has fascinated me greatly I allude to the moon, in which I see 

 minute details with a hardness and sharpness and reality I have 

 never seen before. My opportunities of scrutiny have, however, been 

 fewer than might have been supposed, from my having frequently been 

 engaged in showing this very popular object to many visitors. Yet, 

 notwithstanding that I have thus been able to see more into the 

 moon than ever before so much so that I believe, if a carpet the size 

 of Lincoln's Inn Fields were laid down upon its surface, I should be 

 able to tell whether it was round or square, I see nothing more than 

 a repetition of the same volcanic texture the same cold, crude, 

 silent and desolate character which smaller telescopes usually exhibit. 



Saturn is just now an object of much less physical beauty than 

 when I was here in 1852. I observed, however, on the 15th of April, 

 the passage of Titan on to the disk of the planet, near the northern 

 limb, a phenomenon which of course can only be observed in or near 

 the present position of the ring, and therefore interesting from its 

 rarity. 



With respect to the climate, I have not yet used this telescope in 

 its most favourable season. In 1852 I may be said to have gauged 

 the purity of the sky during the Indian summer with an aperture of 

 two feet ; now I have been gauging it during a less favourable season 



