ADDRESS 



WILLIAM HUGGINS, ESQ. 



D.C.L. (Oxon.), LL.D. (Cantab., Edin., et Dubl.), Ph.D. (Lugd. Bat.), 



r.R.S., F.R.A.S., Hon. F.R.S.E., &c., Correspondant 



de rinstitnt de France, 



PRESIDENT. 



It is now many years since this Association has done honour to the 

 science of Astronomy in the selection of its President. 



Since Sir George Airy occupied the chair in 1851, and the late Lord 

 Wrottesley nine years later in 1860, other sciences have been represented 

 by the distinguished men who have presided over your meetings. 



The very remarkable discoveries in our knowledge of the heavens 

 which have taken place during this period of thirty years — one of amazing 

 and ever-increasing activity in all branches of science — have not passed 

 unnoticed in the addresses of your successive Presidents ; still it seems to 

 me fitting that I should speak to you to-night chiefly of those newer 

 methods of astronomical research which have led to those discoveries,'and 

 which have become possible by the introduction since 1860 into j^ the 

 observatory of the spectroscope and the modern photographic plate. 



In 1866 I had the honour of bringing before this Association, at one 

 of the evening lectures, an account of the first-fruits of the novel and 

 unexpected advances in our knowledge of the celestial bodies which fol- 

 lowed rapidly upon Kirchhofi"s original work on the solar spectrum and 

 the interpretation of its lines. 



Since that time a great harvest has been gathered in the same field 

 by many reapers. Spectroscopic astronomy has become a distinct and 

 acknowledged branch of the science, possessing a large literatiire of its 

 own and observatories specially devoted to it. The more recent discovery 

 of the gelatine dry plate has given a further great impetus to this modem 

 side of astronomy, and has opened a pathway into the unknown of which 

 even an enthusiast thirty years ago would scarcely have dared to dream. 



B 2 



