of Edinburgh, Session 1878 - 79 . 
11 
Angelo Secchi was born at Reggio on the 29 th June 1818, and 
received his early education in the schools of the Jesuit Fathers. 
He at the outset distinguished himself in mathematics and physics, 
and for a time lectured on those subjects in the Collegio Romano. 
In 1844 he commenced his theological studies. Three years later, 
on the Revolution of 1847, he was obliged to take refuge in Eng- 
land, and was ordained priest at the College of Stoney hurst. From 
thence he passed to America, and was made Professor of Physics in 
Georgetown College, where, however, he remained only a very short 
time. The death, in 1848, in London, of Father Francesco di Vico, 
Director of the Observatory and Professor of Astronomy in the 
Collegio Romano, brought Secchi back from America as his suc- 
cessor. Here he laboured for thirty years in accumulating and 
publishing observations, astronomical and meteorological, for which 
the Papal Government, aided by private liberality, furnished him 
with excellent instruments and an ample personal staff. His astro- 
nomical observations were published in three vols. 4to, extending 
from 1851 to 1856. So far as I know, they came down no further. 
Secchi, though an excellent observer and a man of great power, was 
of a discursive turn of mind. He had little power of concentration, 
and appears early to have tired of the monotony of astronomical 
observations, and to have turned his attention to the more popular 
studies of terrestrial magnetism and solar physics. His attention 
to the latter subject had probably been aroused by his having 
assisted Professor Henry, when in America, in making the first 
experiments on the heat radiated by different portions of the sun’s 
disc, by means of the thermo-electric pile. His interest in spectro- 
scopy dates from Janssen’s first visit to Rome, and he turned it to 
good account, having published, in 1847 and 1848, spectroscopic 
observations on more than three hundred stars. The same subject 
is treated in a volume entitled “ The Stars,” published first about 
the time of his death, which will, it is believed, prove to be a work 
of great importance, and likely to procure for its author a lasting 
reputation. 
In 1871 there was formed a Society, calling itself the Society 
degli 'Spettroscopisti Italiani , two of the principal workers in 
which were Secchi at Rome and Tacchini at Palermo. Thanks 
to the liberal supply of funds by the Government, the two observa- 
