THE NUMBER OF THE STARS. 



115 



exercised upon our ideas of the universe, of man's place in it, 

 and of the ahnighty power of God. 



Discission. 



The Chairman (Professor D. S. Margolioi th) : Ladies and 

 Gentlemen, it is my very pleasant duty to ask you to join with me 

 in thanking the Lecturer for his exceedingly lucid and admirable 

 discourse upon a subject which I am convinced is of the greatest 

 interest to all of us. I am sure we all have to thank him, both for 

 his lucidity and also for the beautiful slides with which he has 

 illustrated his lecture. I have, myself, heard a great deal on the 

 subject of the Liternational Photographic Map of the Heavens, 

 because Professor H. H. Turner, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy 

 in Oxford, is a colleague of mine with whom I am much associated, 

 and we in Oxford are very glad to get an opportunity of obtaining 

 fresh information on this abstruse subject when he is lecturing upon 

 it. ... I do not wish to speak for anyone else in the audience, but 

 for my own part, I can only say that a considerable number of the 

 facts which Dr. Chapman has brought before us this afternoon, were 

 new to me, and I now know a good deal more about the Number of 

 the Stars and the light which we receive from them than I did when 

 I entered this room. I feel sure that all here will join with me in 

 thanking the Lecturer most heartily for his admirable discourse. 



Mr. E. Walter Maunder : I think jNIr. Chairman, that we owe 

 a very great debt, indeed a double debt, to Dr. Chapman for having 

 come here this afternoon for, as you know, he is not down upon our 

 published programme. The lecture we had expected to have this 

 afternoon, was one which Dr. C. H. W. Johns had promised to give 

 us on " Early Semitic Migrations," but just before the last meeting 

 of the Institute, we received a letter from Dr. Johns saying that 

 failure of health would prevent his fulfilling his engagement. In 

 this great difficulty, I wondered to whom I could turn for help in 

 order that this afternoon should be filled up, and as I knew that 

 Dr. Chapman had just completed an important research upon the 

 subject of the Number of the Stars, I turned to him. I felt when I 

 approached him that it was hardly a fair request that I was making 

 to ask him at such short notice to come and give us an address of so 

 much importance. But he acceded to my request at once with the 



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