128 
J. E. Howard, Esq., F.E.S. — I know that there are many here better able 
than myself to speak upon the paper just read, but I think we shall all feel that 
Mr. Titcomb has not at all over-estimated the magnitude of the subject which 
he has brought before us. For myself, I would suggest that we exercise the 
greatest possible caution in the way in which we handle the subject ; we 
must all be well aware, that in connection with those last-mentioned 
six days of creation, there are a number of opinions which are strongly 
entertained by many. I presume that we are not all agreed upon the 
interpretation which we should give to this particular portion of Scrip- 
ture, and the very eloquent, able, and interesting paper which we have 
heard must not be taken, I judge, as the collective opinion of the 
members of the Victoria Institute. I wish to say a few words upon the 
amine closely that subject of wh’ch it speaks, — the distance of the nebulae, 
— and came to a clear conviction that both Herschel, in his earlier 
speculations, from whom the view is borrowed, and Struve, in his later 
and kindred theory, were guilty of a great and fundamental oversight, 
which rebutted all their conclusions. The phenomena of the Magellanic 
clouds seemed to me to point decisively in an opposite direction. And on 
general grounds of logic and sound reason, when less apparent size may 
result equally from two causes, real inferiority and greater distance, and we 
have no direct test to decide between them, the natural course is to refer it 
equally to both ; so that a star, giving sixteen times less light, shall be 
naturally assumed to have half the radius, and twice the distance of another. 
Again, that days in Gen. i. mean days, and not long, indefinite periods, 
seems to me a hundred times, clearer than that Gen. i. 20 implies any special 
likeness in the blood globules of birds and fishes, wdien compared with 
mammals, or that the ‘sweet influence of the Pleiades/ in Job, has any 
secret reference to Miidler's unproved, and I think improbable guess, that he 
has detected in Alcyone the true centre of gravity of the whole cosmic 
system. It seems to me quite plain that Orion, the Pleiades, and Arcturus, 
are there named in connection with the changes of the earth’s seasons, as 
indicated by the rising and setting of particular groups of stars, and can 
"thus have no possible reference to such an abstract speculation in sidereal 
and physical astronomy. The view which I adopted with regard to the 
nebulae nearly thirty years ago, is the same in substance as that which Mr. 
Proctor has lately maintained with so much ability.” 
The following letter has also been received from the Rev. A. I. McCaul, 
lecturer in Hebrew at King’s College : — 
“ Mr. Titcomb’s paper does not satisfy me. In § 26, he says of true 
faith, that ‘ it will interpret the writing of Scripture, not as it expects the 
writing to speak, but as it does speak.’ A most excellent maxim, which has 
not been followed (I think) in the note to section 7. ‘ I am not going to enter 
into the question w r hether the first verse of this chapter describes an original 
creation .... because that theory is now held to be impossible by all 
scientific men.’ In other words, the theories of scientific men lead us to 
expect the opening verses of Genesis to have this particular meaning, and 
therefore we will not stop to enter into the question whether the Hebrew 
original admits of this meaning or not. The English version, by its italics, 
is sufficient, or ought to be sufficient, to warn the ordinary reader of the 
2nd verse, that there is something peculiar in the wording of it. I need 
scarcely remind you that the logical copula is, as a rule, omitted in Hebrew, 
