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 Eev. T. W. Webb, M.A., F.E.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 " 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 
mn" Mr Webb, referring to the resolvability of the 
nebulae, says, — *'Nothingseems 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 v/hich 
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 Kocks ;" 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. 
