as Alphecca, though on the 14th it was perceptibly fainter. [34] The velocity of three or four miles per second inferred by the elder Struve must now be regarded (as I long since pointed out would prove to be the case) as very far short of the real velocity of our system's motion through stellar space. [35] M. Cornu's observations are full of interest, and he deserves considerable credit for his energy in availing himself of the few favourable opportunities he had for making them. But he goes beyond his province in adding to his account of them some remarks, intended apparently as a reflection on Mr. Huggins's speculations respecting the star in the Northern Crown. '_I_,' says M. Cornu, 'will not try to form any hypothesis about the cause of the outburst. To do so would be unscientific, and such speculations, though interesting, cumber science wofully.' This is sheer nonsense, and comes very ill from an observer whose successes in science have been due entirely to the employment of methods of observation which would have had no existence had others been as unready to think out the meaning of observed facts as he appears to be himself. [36] The same peculiarity has been noticed since the discovery of the dark ring, the space within that ring being observed by Coolidge and G. Bond at Harvard in 1856 to be apparently darker than the surrounding sky. [37] I cannot understand why Mr. Webb, in his interesting little work, _Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes_, says that the satellite theory of the rings certainly seems insufficient to account for the phenomena of the dark ring. It seems, on the contrary, manifest that the dark ring can scarcely be explained in any other way. The observations recently made are altogether inexplicable on any other theory. [38] A gentleman, whose acquaintance I made in returning from America last spring, assured me that he had found demonstrative evidence showing that a total eclipse of the moon then occurred; for he could prove that Abraham's vision occurred at the time of full moon, so that it could not otherwise have been dark when the sun went down (v. 17). But the horror of great darkness occurred when the sun was going down, and total eclipses of the moon do not behave that way--at least, in our time. [39] It is not easy to understand what else it could have been. The notion that a conjunction of three planets, which took place shortly before the time of Christ's birth, gave rise to the tradition of the star in the east, though propounded by a former president of the Astronomical Society, could hardly be entertained by an astronomer, unless he entirely rejected Matthew's account, which the author of this theory, being a clergyman, can scarcely have done. [40] As, for instance, when he makes Homer say of the moon that Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole.