148 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



hypothesis of Sir W. Herschel was merely intended to show 

 that up to the present time the astronomical phenomena on 

 which it is based are still unexplained by astronomers. He 

 need only refer to the " Intellectual Observer" for November 

 last, in which the Rev. T. W. Webb, M.A., F.R.A.S., in a 

 communication entitled " Clusters and Nebulae," gives a 

 summary of the present astronomical state of the question. 

 While there he found that the " monster telescope" has not 

 yet u snatched every starry orb from the condition of ignoble 

 dust, to which it had been ground. down and kept too long, 

 and restored it to its primitive condition, again a glorious 

 sun." Mr Webb, referring to the resolvability of the 

 nebulas, says, — "Nothing seems to be absolutely demonstrated 

 on either side ; but admitting all the modern observations 

 to be of equal weight, we may perhaps be drifting towards 

 the supposition that the minute granulations into which 

 those cloudy masses seem decomposable may not, after all, 

 be stars, in the usual sense of the word ; or that, as Secchi 

 thinks, the brighter portions may consist of stars, while the 

 fainter may be of another nature, and actually situated, as 

 indeed Herschel had suspected, even nearer to us than some 

 of the bright stars with which they seem connected." This 

 is the only point in the paper by Mr M'Farlane that bears 

 directly on physical science, the greater part of it being 

 occupied with the peculiar cosmological hypothesis which 

 appears to be entirely supported by metaphysical and theo- 

 logical reasoning, and consequently beyond the province and 

 limits of this Society. Our esteemed friend Mr M'Farlane 

 belongs to the class of anti-geologists alluded to by Hugh 

 Miller in " The Testimony of the Rocks ;" and at page 397 

 of that work, the views of Mr M'Farlane are stated at con- 

 siderable length, and are opposed by the facts of science, and 

 also, perhaps somewhat unnecessarily, by the shafts of ridi- 

 cule. It is not likely that Mr M'Farlane will gain many 

 converts to his views on cosmogony from amongst the mem- 

 bers of this Society, but he deserves our best thanks for his 

 earnest and well-meant zeal in urging what he believes to 

 be of the highest importance to the cause of truth and 

 science. 



