[Sidenote: The discovery accidental.] [Sidenote: Mrs. Fleming's discoveries.] This, therefore, is the discovery which we made at Oxford: as you will see, in an entirely accidental manner, during the course of a piece of work in which it was certainly never contemplated. Its purely accidental nature is sufficiently illustrated by the fact that if the plates originally supplied by the makers had been of the proper quality, the plate which led to the discovery would never have been taken. If the plates exposed in February had been satisfactory, we should have been content, and should not have repeated the exposure on March 16th. Again I can testify personally how purely accidental it was that the examination was made on March 24th to see whether anything could be saved, as I have said, from the wreck. The idea came casually into my mind as I was walking through the room and saw the neat pile of rejected plates; and one may fairly call it an accidental impulse. This new star is not, however, the first of such objects to have been discovered "accidentally"; many of the others were found just as much by chance, though a notable exception must be made of those discovered at the Harvard Observatory, which are the result of a deliberate search for such bodies by the careful examination of photographic plates. Mrs. Fleming, who spends her life in such work, has had the good fortune to detect no less than six of these wonderful objects as the reward of her laborious scrutiny; and she is the _only_ person who has thus found new stars by photography until this accidental discovery at Oxford. The following is a complete list of new stars discovered to date:-- LIST OF NEW STARS. +----------------------------------------------+ |Ref. No.| Constellation. | Year.| Discoverer. | +----------------------------------------------+ | 1 | Cassiopeia | 1572 | Tycho Brahé.| | 2 | Cygnus | 1600 | Janson. | | 3 | Ophiuchus | 1604 | Kepler. | | 4 | Vulpecula | 1670 | Anthelm. | | 5 | Ophiuchus | 1848 | Hind. | | 6 | Scorpio | 1860 | Auwers. | | 7 | Corona Borealis| 1866 | Birmingham. | | 8 | Cygnus | 1876 | Schmidt. | | 9 | Andromeda | 1885 | Hartwig. | | 10 | Perseus | 1887 | Fleming. | | 11 | Auriga | 1891 | Anderson. | | 12 | Norma | 1893 | Fleming. | | 13 | Carina | 1895 | Fleming. | | 14 | Centaurus | 1895 | Fleming. | | 15 | Sagittarius | 1898 | Fleming. | | 16 | Aquila | 1899 | Fleming. | | 17 | Perseus | 1901 | Anderson. | | 18 | Gemini | 1903 | At Oxford. | +----------------------------------------------+ [Illustration: MARCH 1, 1903 MARCH 14, 1903 VIII.--THE OXFORD NEW STAR.