PROCEEDINGS. 223 



I then hoped to have completed ere this, the photographs, of the 

 whole southern part of the Via Lactea, but the weather kept so 

 bad that the work was not concluded before the Milky Way had 

 got too far west to admit of the necessary time of exposure for 

 a photograph, and I thereupon directed my attention to the 

 Magellan clouds. Beginning with three hours exposure, I had 

 gradually to increase the time to seven and even eight hours to 

 bring out the wonderful details of these objects. The result has 

 been startling, and will I think be interesting to the members of 

 the Royal Society. 



On September 18th a photograph was taken of Nebecula Major 

 with 4^- hours exposure. Seeing that it wanted still more exposure, 

 I did not at first study it very closely to see what it revealed, but 

 on October 1st I had a silver print taken from it, and saw at 

 once that there was a clearly marked spiral structure involving 

 the whole of the central parts of the nebula, and two secondary 

 spirals forming outlying portions. If we consider for a moment 

 the enormous extent of Nebecula Major, which, according to Sir 

 John Herschel, covers 48 square degrees, we shall see how this 

 mighty spiral system dwarfs all others with which we are 

 acquainted ; and what strong support this photograph gives to 

 the late Mr. Proctor's conception of the form of our Milky Way, 

 the Universe in which we live, which, it will be remembered, he 

 looked upon as a series of great spirals. Here in the Nebecula 

 Major we have spread out before us another Universe with its 

 Suns and its Nebulae, away out in the infinity of space, its spirals 

 so situated that we can see their convolutions, which are in a plane 

 almost at right angles to our line of sight. In the great central 

 spiral the stars are masses like sands on the sea-shore, and yet 

 when carefully examined with a microscope they all seemed to be 

 arranged in parallel curves, as if to show the roundness and 

 wonderful complexity of this object. I have seen nothing like it 

 in any other photograph of any stellar object, excepting that of 

 the brightest portion of our own Milky Way ; that in Sagittarius 

 of which also a photogragh copy is exhibited. Perhaps the most 

 remarkable of all the markings in this object, is a dark space, 

 because it is so suggestive of the rift in our own Milky Way. You 

 will see, as it were in the neck of the great spiral, a great, roughly 

 triangular-shaped darkness which seems to blot out the brilliance 

 belonging to that part — as if a dark cloud intervened between us 

 and it. Most of these details appear in the negatives of October 

 17th and September 18th, and particularly the dark mark, which 

 therefore cannot be a fault of the negative. 



I have also a photograph of Nebecula Minor, which brings out 

 in a very marked way a structure almost identical with that just 

 described as characteristic of Nebecula Major. In other words, 



