ur such
continuous floods to the remotest parts of the system must ever baffle
the mind of man to grasp. But we are not to sit down in indolence: our
duty is to inquire into Nature's works, though we can never exhaust the
field. Our minds cannot imagine motion without some Power moving
through the medium of some subordinate agency, ever acting on the sun,
to send such floods of light and heat to our otherwise cold and dark
terrestrial ball; but it is the overwhelming magnitude of such power
that we are incapable of comprehending. The agency necessary to throw
out the floods of flame seen during the few moments of a total eclipse
of the sun, and the power requisite to burst open a cavity in its
surface, such as could entirely engulph our earth, will ever set all
the thinking capacity of man at nought."

[4] The Observatory, Nos. 34, 42, 45, 49, and 58.

[5] We regret to say that Sheriff Barclay died a few months ago,
greatly respected by all who knew him.

[6] Sir E. Denison Beckett, in his Rudimentary Treatise on clocks and
Watches and Bells, has given an instance or the telescope-driving
clock, invented by Mr. Cooke (p. 213).

[7] J. Norman Lockyer, F.R.S.--Stargazing, Past and Present, p. 302.

[8] This excellent instrument is now in the possession of my
son-in-law, Dr. Hartree, of Leigh, near Tunbridge.

[9] An interesting account of Mr. Alvan Clark is given in Professor
Newcomb's 'Popular Astronomy,' p. 137.

[10] A photographic representation of this remarkable telescope is
given as the frontispiece to Mr. Lockyer's Stargazing, Past and
Present; and a full description of the instrument is given in the text
of the same work. This refracting telescope did not long remain the
largest. Mr. Alvan Clark was commissioned to erect a larger equatorial
for Washington Observatory; the object-glass (the rough disks of which
were also furnished by Messrs. Chance of Birmingham) exceeding in
aperture that of Mr. Cooke's by only one inch. This was finished and
mounted in November, 1873. Another instrument of similar size and
power was manufactured by Mr. Clark for the University of Virginia.
But these instruments did not long maintain their supremacy. In 1881,
Mr. Howard Grubb, of Dublin, manufactured a still larger instrument for
the Austrian Government--the object-glass being of twenty-seven inches
aperture. But Mr. Alvan Clark was not to be beaten. In 1882, he
supplied the Russian Government with the largest r