Lieut. -Gen. C. A. McMahon. 363 



astronomers for the study of astronomical phenomena, which have been 

 obtained by the aid of mechanical, manipulative, and chemical pro- 

 cesses of the highest order at present attainable, and that such data 

 should be, as regards the photographs, free from all personal errors. 



" The photographs portray portions of the starry heavens in a form 

 at all times available for study, and identically as they appear to an 

 observer aided by a powerful telescope and clear sky for observing. 



"Absent are the atmospheric tremors, the cold observatory, the 

 interrupting clouds, the straining of the eyes, the numbing of the 

 limbs, the errors in recording observations, and the many hardships 

 incurred by our predecessors of glorious memory in their attempts to 

 see and fathom the illimitable beyond. 



" I commend the observations and the photographs hereift to 

 astronomers and students of the new astronomy." 



E. S. B. 



LIEUT.-GEN. C. A. McMAHON. 18301904. 



LIEUT. -GEN. CHARLES ALEXANDER MCMAHON, who died on 

 February 21, 1904, at his residence in Nevern Square, London, was born 

 at Highgate on the 23rd of March, 1830. By descent he was Irish, 

 for he derived his name from a clan living in the North of Ireland, 

 whose chief bore the title " Maghghamhna " (a bear), which became 

 McMahon in the unpractised mouths of the seventeenth century 

 English settlers. His grandfather took Orders in the Anglo-Irish 

 Church, and married an English wife, but afterwards became entangled 

 with the United Irishmen, and found it prudent to quit the country in 

 the summer of 1797. Seeking refuge in France, he exchanged the 

 gown for the sword, and attained the rank of captain in the Irish 

 Legion. But his elder son Alexander, though he joined his father in 

 France in 1802, and was educated at St. Cyr, returned to England in 

 1806, obtained a cadetship in the East India Company's Service, and 

 landed at Calcutta on his sixteenth birthday. On reaching the rank of 

 captain, he retired, and spent the rest of his life in England, where he 

 married Miss Ann Mansell, daughter of a major in the British Army. 



