462 



hydrocarb 

 expressed 



Colour 



of 



bani. 



Orange 



NA TURE 



[Sept. 15, 1887 



on, comet, and star. The wave-lenjths are 

 in millionths of a millimetre : — 



Yellow 



Green 



Blue 



Violet 



Carburetted 

 hydrogen. 

 Thalen. " 

 6187 

 61 1 9 

 605-6 

 600 • I 

 595-4 



5633 

 558-3 

 553-0 

 550-0 

 546-6 



516-4 

 512-8 

 5098 



473-6 

 471-4 

 4697 

 468-2 



431 ■! 



Comet 1881 III. 

 (Tebbutt's). 

 Copeland.^ Maunder. 3 

 "A band 



about 



half-way 



between 



CandD." 



563-2 

 555-4 



516-7 

 513-4 



473-3 



467-5 

 430-2 



563-0 



516-3 



473-4 



Typical red 



star. 



Dun^r.4 Vogel.5 



621-0 6220 



604-8 606-5 



563-3 563-1 



'A band in 

 the violet 

 near G." 



End of 

 spec- 

 trum. 

 430-0 



Beside the above, there is in the spectrum of the star 

 a faint band in the violet at X 437 'o, which agrees accord- 

 ing to Vogel, with a hydrocarbon band, not included in 

 the above series. 



The carbon bands thus account for the best-marked of 

 the dark bands characteristic of the type, but there are 

 three or four bands of a slightly different character which 

 do not fall into the series. Thus, the green zone is inter- 

 rupted by a narrow band at X 528-0, and the yellow zone by 

 another at X 575-7 somewhat similar, both of which remain 

 at present unexplained ; and in the orange and red we find 

 two bands in which the abrupt commencement on the red- 

 ward side, and the gradual shading off towards the blue, 

 is no longer apparent. The darkest part of the orange 

 band is, indeed, near its centre, a dark Hne, coincident, 

 there is scarcely any room to question, with the giant 

 doublet of sodium, the great D lines of the solar spectrum. 

 The red band, though without a nucleus which can be 

 identified as a typical line of this or that element, gathers 

 round the site of the red hydrogen line C. The two 

 bands therefore strongly recall, though the resemblance 

 may perhaps be a misleading one, the great water-vapour 

 groups around C and D in the absorption spectrum of 

 our own atmosphere. The dry-air bands a and 8 — 

 A and B being out of sight in the extreme red — do not 

 appear to be represented. With a view to exhibit the 

 relationship of these telluric bands to those in the less 

 refrangible part of the spectrum of the typical red star, an 

 outline of the solar spectrum has been added to the dia- 

 gram, and the positions of the great Fraunhofer lines and 

 of the principal bands due to the absorption of our own 

 atmosphere have been indicated. 



THE BRITISH ASSOC I A TION. 

 SECTION D. 



BIOLOGY. 



Opening Address by Alfred Newton, M.A., F.R. S., 

 F.L. S., -y.P.Z. S., &c., Professor of Zoology and 

 Comparative Anatomy in the University of Cam- 

 bridge, President of the Section. 



In opening the business of this Section I cannot but call to 

 mind the last occasion when the British As50ciation met in 



' " Recherches sur les Spectres des Metalloides." 



* Copernicus, \ A. ii. p. 227. 3 Observatory, Vil, iv. pp. 303, 306. 



4 "Sur les Etoiles \ Spectres de la Tro'siems Classe," p. 122. 



5 "Public, des Astroph. Obs. zu Potsiam," vM. iv. p. 31. 



the cily of Manchester, just six-and-twenty years ago ; and, while 

 my memory brings back to me many pleasing recollections of 

 that gathering, I cannot help dwelling upon the extraordinary 

 difference between the state of things that then existed and that 

 which we have before us to-day. The moral of the contrast I 

 shall not seek to enforce. Those, if any there still be, who 

 despair of the future of our Association may reflect up )n it at 

 their leisure ; while those who believe, as I do, that our Associa- 

 tion has no justifiable cause for thinking that its work is accom- 

 plished, that it had better settle its worldly affai s, and compose 

 its robes around it in a becoming fashion, before lying down to 

 die, will at once appreciate the difference. 



Yet there is one difference between our proceedings to-day 

 and those of more than a quarter of a century since which I, per- 

 sonally, do not appreciate. In that remote and golden age it 

 had not become obligatory on the President of this Section to pre- 

 pare beforehand an address to be delivered to a critical, even 

 though kindly, audience. A few words of friendly greeting to 

 old faces, and a hearty welcome to those that were new, with 

 a general statement of the objects of our coming together, com- 

 prised all that was expected from the occupant of the chair. 

 Such was my case when my predecessor, who was, I may 

 observe, my excellent friend and colleague, Prof. Babington, 

 opened the proceedings of this Section — then called the Section 

 of Zoology and Botany— at Manchester in 1S61 ; and I am sure 

 I have reason to envy his happy lot, for, on refreshing my memory 

 by turning to the report of that meeting, I find that his intro- 

 ductory " remarks " occupy a space of less than eight lines of 

 print. In this respect, but in this only, I must confess myself 

 laudator teinporis acti, and it having now been for so many years 

 the practice of your President to deliver an address on occasions 

 like the present, I feel that I should be filling my portion under 

 false pretences did I not conform to established usage, though I 

 am well aware that what I have to say will, for many reasons, 

 hardly bear comparison with what has been said by many of my 

 distinguished predecessors. 



But t ) continue the contrast of what took place in this Section 

 at our last meeting in Manchester with what may be expected to 

 happen now, I would remark that the year 1861 was one which, 

 when the history of biology comes to be written, will be found 

 to deserve particular recognition. This is not merely because of 

 • the all-important discovery of ArJiajpteryx, for that had not been 

 made known when the Association met, and did not aflfect our 

 proceedings here. When we met, it was a time, so to speak, of 

 "slack water" ; but slack water is commonly the effect of two 

 contrary streams, and perhaps I ought to state how this came 

 about. All present should be aware that it was before the Lin- 

 nean Society on July I, 1858, that the stupendous announcement 

 was made of a theory which for the first time brought to the 

 notice of biologists a reasonable explanation of the mode by 

 which what had hitherto passed under the name of the trans- 

 mutation of species could be effected. It is notorious that this 

 announcement attracted but little attention at first, and, though 

 it were easy to account for this fact, I see no need to occupy 

 your time by so doing. I would, however, beg your attention to 

 another fact which is by no means notorious. So far as I am 

 aware, the first zoologist publicly to accept and embrace the 

 theory propounded on that memorable evening on behalf of Mr. 

 Darwin and Mr. Wallace, was my old friend Canon Tristram, 

 and moreover he did this ere little more than a twelvemonth 

 had expired {Ibis, October 1859, pp. 429-433). To me it will 

 always be a matter of rejoicing that the adoption of this theory 

 was so early accepted, and additional evidence in its favour 

 adduced, by one who ha^ devoted so much tiine and energy to 

 the particular bran:h of zoology which has long recommended 

 itself to me ; for thereby I hope that the study of ornithology 

 may be said to have been lifted above its fellows. This, how- 

 ever, is a digression, for introducing which I trust I may be 

 pardoned. And now to return to my main business. Late in 

 the autumn of 1859, as you know, Mr. Darwin's essay on the 

 "Origin of Species" appeared — a mere abstract, as it still 

 remains, of an enormous mass of materials industriously accumu- 

 lated by him through many long years — a mass out of which, as 

 he himself has modestly said, a competent man might have 

 written "a splendid book" — but a mass with which he, chiefly 

 through ill-health, had been unable to deal properly. Yet I am 

 not sure that we have any reason to lament the result. The 

 handy size of that celebrated little volume gave it a power of 

 penetration and circulation that would not have been possessed 

 by a work of greater bulk, while the studied abssnce of tech- 



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