July 24, 1890J 



NA TURE 



293 



has none. It bears the mark of hurried revision, and 

 stands condemned as one of the most incomplete and 

 incorrect productions of its kind. The title of the volume 

 is " The Starry Heavens," and had it been written a 

 quarter of a century ago might have contained most of the 

 matter that is now given. In the face of this fact, which 

 can be well substantiated, Mr. Chambers remarks, " The 

 contents of the volume have been thoroughly revised 

 and brought up to date, and when necessary extended 

 and re-arranged ; " yet the only reference to the im- 

 portant and increasing application of photography to the 

 delineation of nebulas is that in the case of the nebula 

 in Andromeda : " Mr. I. Roberts has recently obtained 

 photographs of this object which seem to combine the 

 features exhibited by Sir J. Herschel in the engraving 

 appended to his ' Outlines of Astronomy,' with the rifts 

 recorded by Bond." 



The curtness with which Mr. Chambers disposes of the 

 long-exposure photographs which mark an era in the 

 progress of astronomy is lamentable, and the comparison 

 of them with previous observations is misleading, for the 

 features shown in the engraving at the end of Sir J. 

 Herschel's " Outlines " were never observed ; and if Mr. 

 Chambers has seen the photograph he must have noticed 

 that Bond's rifts are considerably extended, and appear 

 as divisions between masses of nebulous matter sweeping 

 round the nucleus. At any rate a person who had not 

 seen the photograph would scarcely be able to appreciate 

 its beauty from the description. 



We do not, of course, wish to say that, since photography 

 has so considerably extended our knowledge of the struc- 

 ture of celestial species, all drawings of them should be 

 discarded. The photographic plate only adds to their 

 value because, by a cumulative effect, it grasps and 

 renders manifest faint light which the eye alone can 

 never appreciate ; but this is such an important develop- 

 ment that the hand-book in which nebulae are described 

 and their forms dilated upon without giving it full con- 

 sideration must be stigmatized as terribly incomplete. 



Again, the selection of drawings of nebulae which Mr- 

 Chambers made for the first edition of this work in 1867, 

 and which is still retained, is not a happy one by the 

 common consent of all observers ; and we should have 

 supposed that, since many elementary text-books contain 

 reproductions of some of the photographs of nebulae, a 

 work of such pretensions as this, in which drawings of 

 nebulae may be counted by the score, would have had at 

 least one photographic representation of their form to 

 enrich its pages. 



Also, with respect to the nebula in Andromeda, Mr. 

 Chambers records: " Huggins has noticed the spectrum to 

 be continuous (though cut off at the red end), and there- 

 fore, whatever it is seemingly, it is not gaseous." That 

 the spectrum was observed by Dr. Huggins in 1864. to 

 be crossed " evidently either by lines of absorption or by 

 bright lines," and that it has been shown to have the 

 same spectrum as that of a comet at a mean distance 

 from the sun, are matters with which Mr. Chambers is 

 apparently not acquainted. It is good to see it asserted, 

 in an italicized expression however, that the nebula does 

 not consist of gaseous matter. 



Following the chapters devoted to star clusters, nebulae, 

 iiid the Milky Way, and making up the greater portion 

 NO. 1082, VOL. 42] 



of the work, we find catalogues of naked-eye, red, vari- 

 able, and binary stars, which may be found useful. The 

 indexes to both volumes leave much to be desired ; indeed, 

 the author notes that they are not complete by themselves, 

 and are designed for use in connection with the table of 

 contents. The disadvantages of this division are obvious, 

 since reference is rendered unnecessarily difficult, a cir- 

 cumstance which, in the eyes of those accustomed to 

 use works of this character, detracts considerably from 

 its merit. At the end of the third volume a general 

 index to the whole work is inserted which is said to 

 be comprehensive. In this we find the names given 

 of all the minor planets, although in the vast majority of 

 cases the cognomen of these unimportant bodies is only 

 known to the discoverer, and to index them is an utter 

 waste of space. The principle, however, of including what 

 might have been omitted and of omitting what should 

 have been included, seems to have been followed by Mr. 

 Chambers through each of the three volumes. We should 

 advise, therefore, that in the case of a future edition a 

 more careful consideration of what constitutes astro- 

 nomical progress should be made. If this were done, and 

 the facts were arranged in a rather better order, the 

 compilation would be more useful as a hand-book of 

 astronomy. 



ANNALS OF THE MUSEUM OF BUENOS 

 A YRES. 

 Annates del Mtiseo Naciotial de Buenos Aires para dar a 

 conocer los objectos de historia natural nuivos 6 poco 

 conocidos conservados en este estableamento. Por 

 German Burmeister, Med. Dr., Phil. Dr., Director del 

 Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires. Entrega decima- 

 sexta. (Buenos Aires, 1890.) 



THE veteran man of science, Dr. H. Burmeister, of 

 Buenos Ayres, continues to issue the "Annals" of 

 the Museum under his charge with unfailing regularity, 

 and now sends us a copy of the i6th part of this excellent 

 serial. Upon the present occasion he deserts for a while 

 his favourite subject of the fossil animals, which the 

 Argentine Tertiaries produce in such countless abund- 

 ance and of so strange a character, and gives us an 

 account of a scientific expedition into Patagonia, recently 

 carried out by his son, Sr. Carlos V. Burmeister, one of the 

 assistant naturalists of the Museum. 



The scientific staff of the expedition to Patagonia left 

 Buenos Ayres in November 1 888, and proceeded by railway 

 to Bahia Blanca, and thence by diligence to Carmen on 

 the Rio Negro, where the rest of the party was assembled. 

 The next point attained was Trelew, the chief town of 

 the Welsh settlement on the Rio Chubut, which is now 

 connected by a railway, 70 kilometres in length, with 

 Port Madryn on the Atlantic. By this route, various 

 additional stores, forwarded direct from Buenos Ayres by 

 steamer, were received, and the Expedition, being fully 

 equipped, finally started for the interior of Patagonia on 

 January 9, 1889. The route taken was up the valley of 

 the Chubut until its junction with its tributary, the Rio 

 Chico, whence the latter was followed to its source in the 

 great Lake Colhue. Although the country surrounding 

 this sheet of water is now utterly devoid of trees of any 

 sort, this was certainly not the case in past times, as 



