setting at the end of the month about a quarter past twelve. On the evening of the 19th, he will be very near the Moon.

THE MOON.-New Moon occurs at 1h. 38m. on the afternoon of the 9th day; first quarter at 6h. 48m. on the morning of the 16th; and Full Moon at 1h. 55m. on the afternoon of the 23rd. We may just mention that Copernicus will be on the terminator on the evening of the 17th, Tycho on the 18th, and Aristarchus on the 19th.

OCCULTATIONS.-Two occultations of stars by the Moon will take place during this month in the evening hours before midnight, but in neither case is the star of any considerable brightness. The first is that of 49 Libræ on the 18th, which disappears at 8h. 16m., and re-appears at 9h. 33m. As the time of the former phenomenon is only ten minutes after sunset, the star, which is only of the fiveand-a-half magnitude, will be overpowered by the daylight. The re-appearance may perhaps be caught, if looked for in the right place, 59° from the Moon's highest point, to the left hand as seen in an inverting telescope. The other occultation is that of 45 Aquarii on the night of the 25th. The star disappears at 11h. 2m. at 155° from the highest point to the right hand side, and, after being hidden for the space of only nineteen minutes, reappears at 11h. 21m., very near the lowest point of the Moon. As she is only two days past the full, it will not be easy to catch the exact time of reappearance, particularly as the star is of only the sixth magnitude.

SOLAR OBSERVATIONS.-Dr. Tietjen, of Berlin, has been making further observations of the envelope of gaseous matter surrounding the Sun, which first discovered its existence to astronomers in the protuberances seen during solar eclipses. He has extended the method of "seeing without perceiving" them, by the application of the spectroscope to the circumference of the Sun's disc; when the appearance of the bright lines frequently indicated the presence of protuberantial matter, and even enabled him on several occasions to examine the shape of the outline of some portions of it.* Thus, on February 6th, a pillar-shaped protuberance showed itself, broader at the base than at the apex, which, in the course of a few hours, became curved. On the 15th of the same month, bright lines were seen all round the edge of the disc. A very beautiful protuberance exhibited its bright lines on the afternoon of the 1st of April, the line known as C shining with great intensity. The size of the prominence was very considerable; in shape it resembled a waterbottle, whose neck rested perpendicularly upon the Sun's limb. On searching for it again the next morning, nothing could be seen, but some short bright lines immediately on the disc.

* “Astronomische Nachrichten," No. 1757.

The lines which were usually seen were those corresponding to the dark lines in the solar spectrum C and F,* and a third near, but not coinciding with, the dark line D. Of these the first was nearly always considerably the most intensely luminous; generally also longer than F, and frequently than the third near D. Dr. Tietjen several times thought he saw traces of other short bright lines, but was not certain of their reality. But on the 25th of March, about noon, a fine bright line between D and E was positively seen, but he could not decide whether it coincided accurately with the position of any dark line.

We cannot but feel great satisfaction at the prospect of the continuous increase in our knowledge of solar physics which must result from the means now afforded by the spectroscope of studying frequently those protuberances so long considered to contain mysteries of which a solution could only be sought on the rare and brief occasion of a total solar eclipse. The existence of masses of gaseous matter round the sun, and particularly of hydrogen in great abundance, is clearly indicated and fully established by the appearance of the bright lines in question, and by the especial intensity and length of the line C.

It is, indeed, curious to reflect how little Wollaston, when, in the year 1802, he saw a few of the dark lines of the solar spectrum by merely receiving through a prism a thin line of light admitted into a darkened room by an aperture in a window-shutter, could have imagined the important consequences which would, in little more than half a century, result from the persevering and accurate study of these lines. Had Newton, when by a similar method he first, to use the poet's expression, "untwisted all the shining robe of day," examined the spectrum directly by bringing the prism close to his eye, he would in all probability have anticipated Dr. Wollaston's discovery, made nearly two centuries afterwards. The only conclusion the latter appears to have drawn from his observation of the lines was, that it afforded the means of definitely dividing the coloured spectrum into four parts. A distinct dark line separated, he stated,† the red and orange part on one side, and the violet alone on the other, from the remainder of the spectrum. The large space between was less distinctly divided into two by a dark line between the green and blue part; the

Dr. Tietjen afterwards noticed, as Father Secchi had before, that this bright line does not accurately coincide with the dark line F, although it is quite close to it. Also that there is a very fine dark line near D, coinciding with the bright line seen by him.

+ "Philosophical Transactions," 1802, p. 378.

division having a finer dark line a little distance on each side of it, either of which might, in an imperfect experiment, be mistaken for the division itself.* Thus Dr. Wollaston thought he had rectified the ideas both of those who considered that there were seven primary colours, and of those who imagined that these might be reduced to three.

And in this state his discovery remained until, in the year 1815, Fraunhofer, by using a telescope to magnify the prismaticallydispersed spectrum, observed and accurately measured the positions of hundreds of these lines, since which time they have been known by the name of Fraunhofer's lines. After this time they occupied much of the attention of scientific men in several countries; but it was not until the year 1860 that Kirchhoff arrived at a true and satisfactory view of their origin. Less than ten years has now elapsed since he succeeded in converting the bright lines emitted by several vaporized metals into dark lines when their spectra were viewed through the same vapours at a lower temperature; and a very large number of these lines were identified with those of the solar spectrum. It is not, of course, our intention here to enter further into the history of the great advances which science has, in this comparatively short interval, been thus enabled to make; but we have thought it worth while, at a time when still further advances seem about to be made, to recall to the recollection of our readers the first small beginnings of such marvellous and admirable results.

VARIABLE STARS.-The known variables, of long period, which will this month reach their maximum of brightness, are seven in number. As they may be all visible during some part of the evening, we annex a table of their places (for the present year), probable length of period in days, maximum and minimum of brightness, and the date about which they may be expected to arrive at a maximum :

* The three "divisions" of Dr. Wollaston correspond to the lines now known as D, F, and G.

WINNECKE'S COMET.-We had hoped in this number to have been able to give the results of the observations of this small body which have been made during the two months of its visibility since last April; they were, however, not to hand at the time of our going to press. Rümker, the well-known director of the Hamburg Observatory, appears to have been the first person who saw it after Dr. Winnecke, on the 14th of April: after which he and his assistant, Dr. Helmert, obtained a valuable series of observations, commencing on the 28th. They describe the comet as a roundish, very diffused nebulous object, more than two minutes of arc in diameter, with a strong central condensation, of about forty seconds, within which a nucleus several times showed itself, and on the 29th of April, two nuclei very close together ("Astronomische Nachrichten,” No. 1759). Mr. Perry, of Stonyhurst College, succeeded also in observing the comet on the 11th and 12th of May, but could see no decided nucleus. (Monthly Notices of the R.A.S., vol. xxix., p. 300.)

WOMANKIND:

IN ALL AGES OF WESTERN EUROPE.

BY THOMAS WRIGHT, F.S.A.

CHAPTER XV.

HOW ENGLISHWOMEN LOOKED IN THE DAYS OF QUEEN

ELIZABETH.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the painters and engravers employed in England were mostly Flemings or Dutchmen, who took up their residence here. One of the former was Lucas de Heere, a talented painter, born at Ghent, in 1534, who resided a part of his life in our island, and returned to die at his native town in 1584. He is stated to have been employed in 1570 to paint a gallery for the Lord High Admiral, Edward, Earl of Lincoln, in which he was to represent in compartments the habits of different nations; and Horace Walpole, to whose "Anecdotes of Painting" we owe this information, tells us that, when he came to the Englishman, instead of representing him in a well-known costume, he painted a naked man, with cloth of different kinds lying by him, and a pair of shears in his hand, in doubt as to what form of costume he should adopt, intending it for a satire upon the fickleness of fashions for which the English were then rather celebrated. The satire, though somewhat severe, was not an original thought with Lucas de Heere.

Almost thirty years before, an English physician, well-known as a popular writer of his age, Andrew Borde, published a book entitled, "The first boke of the Introduction of Knowlege," treating upon the different peoples of the earth and their languages, in the first of which he speaks of the "naturall disposicion of an Englyshman." The subjoined cut represents exactly the same idea as that here ascribed to Lucas de Heere, in evidence of which I here

give a copy of it. It is followed by verses, the first six of which read as follows:

"I am an Englysh man, and naked I stand here,
Musyng in my mynd what rayment I shal were;
For now I wyll were thys, and now I wyl were that ;
Now I wyl were I cannot tel what.

All new fashyons be plesaunt to me;

I wyll have them, whether I thryve or thee (flourish)."

The satire conveyed in these verses was severe; but it was not applicable to Englishmen alone, for it was much the same in France, where individuals appear to have borrowed the details of their costume from whatever foreign peoples they chose, and we hear of one who would wear a pourpoint à la Suisse, of another who would wear a pourpoint à l'Allemande, a third a pourpoint a l'Espagnole, and so on to any extent. In fact, we seem to have derived this excessive love of variety from France, although in the earlier half of the sixteenth century, and in the reign of