ipod, and looked
in beautiful condition. It is a refractor, made by Cooke and Sons of
York. The object glass is three inches; the focal length forty-three
inches; and the telescope, when drawn out, with the pancratic eyepiece
attached, is about four feet. It was made after Mr. Robertson's
directions, and is a sort of combination of instruments.

"Even that instrument," he proceeded, "good as it is for the money,
tantalises me yet. A look through a fixed equatorial, such as every
large observatory is furnished with is a glorious view. I shall never
forget the sight that I got when at Dunecht Observatory, to which I was
invited through the kindness of Dr. Copeland, the Earl of Crawford and
Balcarres' principal astronomer.

"You ask me what I have done in astronomical research? I am sorry to
say I have been able to do little except to gratify my own curiosity;
and even then, as I say, I have been much tantalised. I have watched
the spots on the sun from day to day through obscured glasses, since
the year 1878, and made many drawings of them. Mr. Rand Capron, the
astronomer, of Guildown, Guildford, desired to see these drawings, and
after expressing his satisfaction with them, he sent them to Mr.
Christie, Astronomer Royal, Greenwich. Although photographs of the
solar surface were preferred, Mr. Capron thought that my sketches might
supply gaps in the partially cloudy days, as well as details which
might not appear on the photographic plates. I received a very kind
letter from Mr. Christie, in which he said that it would be very
difficult to make the results obtained from drawings, however accurate,
at all comparable with those derived from photographs; especially as
regards the accurate size of the spots as compared with the diameter of
the sun. And no doubt he is right.

"What, do I suppose, is the cause of these spots in the sun? Well, that
is a very difficult question to answer. Changes are constantly going
on at the sun's surface, or, I may rather say, in the sun's interior,
and making themselves apparent at the surface. Sometimes they go on
with enormous activity; at other times they are more quiet. They recur
alternately in periods of seven or eight weeks, while these again are
also subject to a period of about eleven years--that is, the short
recurring outbursts go on for some years, when they attain a maximum,
from which they go on decreasing. I may say that we are now (August
1883) at, or very ne