7 
JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. TUF 
tal Milton had anticipated it in a passage from Paradise Lost, which 
runs: ‘‘Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the Sun was not.” As- 
tronomy taught that worlds as well as individuals have a birth, 
mature and decay. 
The wonderful Spiral Nebula in Canes Venatici, as drawn by 
Lord Ross, was exhibited and compared with recent photographs 
from the Lick Observatory. 
In speaking of the Ring Nebula in Lyra, Mr. Jenkins said he 
had lately seen it to great advantage through the President’s fine 
5-inch telescope. 
The different orders of Nebulze—gaseous, stellar, planetary, ring 
formed, elliptical and spiral, were all touched upon by the speaker. 
With regard to Star Clusters, it was shown that a fundamental 
difference existed between them and Nebule proper. Many of the 
so called Nebulz are resolved into stars by instruments of sufficient 
power, but the true Nebulze have defied every effort at their resolva- 
bility, and the Spectroscope showed that the Nebulz which could 
not be separated into stars, as in the ordinary clusters, were not col- 
lections of stars at all, but masses of glowing gases. Examples of 
various clusters in Hercules, Capricornus, Aquarius, Libra and other 
constellations, were exhibited. 
The cluster in Hercules was one of the finest in the whole 
heavens, and was discovered by Halle, in 1714, who says of it: 
“This is but a little patch, but it shows itself to the naked eye when 
the sky is serene and the moon absent.” Messier was quite sure it 
did not contain a single star, but Professor Pickering, of Harvard, 
had succeeded in photographing this cluster, so that the stars of 
which it is composed can be easily numbered. 
In conclusion a graphic description of some of the latest results 
of Spectrum Analysis was given relating to Nebulz and Star Clusters. 
