Ixviii • President's Address 



of three or four months. Mr. MacGeorge reports from 

 observations made only two months since that still further 

 changes were evident. The full significance of these changes 

 can hardly yet be estimated, but they overthrow many of 

 our hitherto received notions of the conditions of these 

 tenants of space. It is a subject of the highest interest in 

 physical astronomy, and one that will demand unremitting 

 observation and drawing for its further elucidation. 



I am glad to inform you that Government has given me the 

 authority to publish every month the results of our observa- 

 tions in meteorology, terrestrial magnetism, and of other 

 phenomena ; the numbers from the commencement of the 

 year till the end of May are already before the public. By 

 this means all the useful information derivable from the 

 Observatory work in these branches of investigation is made 

 quickly and generally available. Photography of celestial 

 objects has been commenced with the great telescope, and 

 some exceedingly fine and promising negatives of the moon 

 were taken, enlargements from which have already been 

 exhibited at one of our meetings. Since April the weather 

 has been too unfavourable to proceed with this work. 

 Attempts to obtain photographs of planets and nebulae have 

 since been made, but while those of the planets promise 

 well, no impression whatever of the brightest nebulae could 

 be secured. 



Among the many subjects which have occupied a 

 larger share of attention of scientific circles in the older 

 world, and which mark indelibly the progress of scientific 

 research during the past year, there is one which appears to 

 me of surpassing importance. The Royal Astronomical 

 Society awarded its gold medal this year to Professor 

 Schiaparelli, director of the observatory at Milan, principally 

 on account of his researches on the relations that exist 

 between comets and shooting stars. You will remember in 



