ntil the sun is
again far enough away to allow of the particular region being seen at
night.

[Sidenote: A disappointment.]

[Sidenote: A curious plate.]

[Sidenote: A strange object.]

[Sidenote: A new star?]

Roughly speaking then, if a plate which should be taken in February is not
secured in this month owing to bad weather, the proper time for taking it
will not occur again until the following February; and when there was a
fair prospect of finishing our work in 1903, it became important to secure
each plate at the proper time in that year. Hence we were making special
efforts to utilise to the full any fine night that Providence sent in our
way, and on such occasions it is clearly an economy, if not exactly to
"make hay while the sun shines," at any rate to take plates vigorously
while the sun is _not_ shining and the night is fine; leaving the
development of them until the daytime. There is, of course, the risk that
the whole night's work may in this way be lost owing to some fault in the
plates, which might have been detected if some of them were immediately
developed. Perhaps in the early days of our work it would have been
reckless or foolish to neglect this little precaution; but we had for
years been accustomed to rely upon the excellence of the plates without
finding our trust betrayed; and the sensitiveness of the plates had
increased rather than diminished as time went on. Hence it will be readily
understood that when one fatal morning we developed a series of some
thirty plates, and found that owing to some unexplained lack of
sensitiveness they were all unsuitable for our purpose, it came as a most
unwelcome and startling surprise. It was, of course, necessary to make
certain that there was no oversight, that the developer was not at fault,
and that the weather had not been treacherous. All such possibilities were
carefully considered before communication with the makers of the plates,
but it ultimately became clear that there had been some unfortunate
failure in sensitiveness, and that it would be necessary to repeat the
work with opportunities restricted by the intervening lapse of time.
However, disappointments from this or similar causes are not unknown in
astronomical work; and we set about this repetition with as little loss of
time and cheerfulness as was possible. Under the circumstances, however,
it seemed desirable to examine carefully whether anything could be saved
from the wreck--wheth