202 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
if such a scheme had been advocated by the Council, and eventually it had 
appeared that one or two members of the Council reaped personal advantage 
from the scheme, the dignity of the Society would have suffered. It was 
probably the fear of such a result (which does not seem to have occurred to 
Mr. De La Hue) which led the Council to oppose the scheme. 
The following Council list, while it is marked by one regretable feature 
— the absence of Mr. De La Due’s name (at his own request) — has, neverthe- 
less, the great advantage of showing that the Society supports the efforts of 
the former Council to prevent any action by which the dignity of the 
Society and the self-respect of its individual members could in any way 
suffer : — 
President, Arthur Cayley, Esq., M.A., F.D.S. Vice-Presidents, Sir G. B. 
Airy, K.C.B., F.D.S., Astronomer Doyal ; William Lassell, Esq., F.D.S. ; 
Dev. Dobert Main, M.A., F.D.S . ; Dev. Charles Pritchard, M.A., F.D.S. 
Treasurer, Samuel C. Whitbread, Esq. Secretarus, Edwin Dunkin, Esq . ; 
Diehard A. Proctor, Esq., B.A. Foreign Seo'etary, William Huggins, Esq., 
D.C.L., LL.D., F.D.S. Council, J. C. Adams, Esq., M.A., F.D.S.; J. 
Browning, Esq. ; D. B. Clifton, Esq. ; H. M. Christie, Esq. ; E. B. 
Denison, Esq. ; T. A. Hirst, Esq. ; George Knott, Esq. ; Lord Lindsay ; 
Capt. W. Noble; Dev. S. J. Perry; A. C. Danyard, Esq., M.A. ; Capt. G. 
L. Tupman, D.M.A. 
Observations of the Solar Prominences with Small Telescopes. — Those who 
are interested in the subject of the solar prominences wiU find the following 
remarks by Capt. Tupman of great value, though it must be premised that 
such success as he has attained depends fully as much on the observer as on 
the telescopic and spectroscopic means made use of: — ‘‘In order to view the 
prominences on the limb of the Sun,” he says, “it has generally been 
thought necessary to employ a somewhat large telescope, fitted with a 
spectroscope of great dispersion. To show that this is a mistaken idea, I 
have brought for your inspection the small instrument with which the 
observations detailed below were made. The telescope is a common one of 
3 inches aperture, with an indifferent object-glass of 40 inches focal length. 
The spectroscope, by Mr. Browning, is a direct vision of five prisms, pro- 
ducing a dispersion very little greater than that of an ordinary fiint prism 
of 60°. There is a small tube carrying the slit and achromatic collimating 
lens, and a small telescope for examining and magnifying the spectrum, the ! 
whole being attached to the telescope by means of a screw adapter. The ( 
entire cost of the combination, including the pillar and claw-stand, was * 
18/. ; and I have no doubt that an equally effective instrument could be 
made for much less. 
“ The adjustments are very simple. The small telescope is first focussed ' 
for celestial objects and marked. The slit is then adjusted, by means of ' 
the sliding-tube, so that its edges are perpendiculur to the plane of disper- 
sion, and exactly in focus of the small telescope. The latter is best done 
by focussing on the lines of the solar spectrum with a very fine opening. 
The slit is then opened to *002 or *003 of an inch, moved laterally, until 
the C line is approximately in the middle of the field, and the spectroscope 
attached to telescope so that the slit is in the principal focus of the object- 
glass. 
