SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY, 
ASTRONOMY. 
Astronomical Events of the Past Year . — In his opening address at the 
first meeting of the season, in November last, the President, the Pev. Charles 
Ifiitchard, alluded to the progress of astronomy for the past year. Astro- 
nomical gains were not so conspicuous as in former years, hut it must hey 
remembered that astronomy was, like all other sciences, progressive, and its 
progress was necessarily slow ; and although he had no new discoveries to 
bring forward as having occurred during the year, there was ample assurance 
that plenty of men had been at work ; and when this was the case there 
was no doubt that, like bees gathering honey, observations of the greatestvalue 
would be made and stored up. In our present summary we propose to notice 
the principal astronomical events which have occurred during the year that 
has just passed j and while doing what we can to avoid the appearance of 
repetition in a few cases in which the subject has already been brought 
before our readers, we shall refer to some matters relating to the science 
which have not been alluded to in our last volume. 
The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society was last year presented 
to Mr. Huggins and Dr. W. A. Miller (conjointly) for their labours in astro- 
nomical physics, and more especially for what they had done with regard to 
spectrum analysis, by which that process had been successfully applied in 
examining the nature and constitution of the heavenly bodies. In order to 
present the medal to two persons for the same work, the bye-laws of the 
society were at a former meeting suspended for this occasion. Some little 
discussion took place as to the propriety of this proceeding 5 but the meeting 
was unanimous in approval of the Council’s award of the medal to Messrs. 
Huggins and Miller. 
An Eclipse of the Sun, in which about three-fourths of the disk were 
obscured, took place on the morning of March 6 . Near London the 
sky was more or less overcast during the progress of the phenomenon ; 
nevertheless, a great part of the eclipse was well observed. In many places 
in England the whole was seen, the light clouds preventing the necessity of 
using dark glasses. Mr. Brothers, of Manchester, obtained some excellent 
photographs of the eclipse at the time of greatest obscuration. No traces of 
spots were observed on the sun on this occasion. 
A Partial Eclipse of the Moon, in which more than half the surface of the 
disk was obscured by the earth’s shadow, took place on the evening of 
Friday, September 13, and the night being cloudless, it was well seen by 
numbers of spectators. The first contact with the shadow occurred at a tew 
minutes before eleven o’clock, and the eclipse terminated about two o’clock 
YOL. VII. — NO. XXYI. G 
