recent excavations. Most of these are only casts or electrotypes from the real coins, having a certain interest as true copies, but not to be paid for as originals. It may also be interesting to exhibit an engraved specimen of the clumsy forgeries of Jewish coins which deceived the numismatic amateurs of the last generation, and for which purchasers are still found among the unwary. The specimen engraved (Fig. 11) belongs to the Messrs. Groombridge, who have kindly lent it for this occasion. The examination of the obverse alone will be sufficient to exhibit the wretchedness of such attempts at falsification. The type is a vase of quite modern fashion, the handles and other parts being ornamented in the most paltry style of the last century, instead of having the severely simple character of the Omer of the ancient shekels (engraving No. 1), which it is intended to imitate. The smoke or incense issuing from it, a most unmeaning addition, is also treated in a flat, unartistic, and modern feeling. But the great and fatal mistake of the forger is the inscription, " Shekel Ishrael," in which the modern Hebrew letters are used instead of those of the ancient alphabet, which was always employed for monumental and other public purposes in Judæa, especially for the coinage, even after the later kind of writing had been long generally prevalent as the popular style. Some of these forgeries have been made to bear the name of Solomon, David, or even Samuel, though it is well known that no Jewish coin of any kind was issued previous to the epoch of Alexander the Great, several centuries after the time of Solomon; and that no Jewish coins bearing the name of a prince or high priest were issued till the comparatively late period of the Maccabees. Many other coins, illustrative of Judæan history, might easily have been added to those described above, were it not that the article has already assumed dimensions of far greater extent than was originally intended. CLUSTERS, NEBULE, AND OCCULTATIONS. BY THE REV. T. W. WEBB, M.A., F.R.A.S. NEBULE. We opened our list with a promise of glorious and wonderful objects of contemplation, and our readers, we believe, will not have found themselves hitherto deceived by overwrought expectations. We cannot ensure them a continuous succession of scenes of equal interest and wonder; our next, however, will be little inferior to its great predecessor; and those accustomed to a search after obscure and difficult objects will readily adopt the epithet of "overpowering," which Smyth has so characteristically applied to it. It is 3. The Great Nebula in Andromeda. Being readily visible to the unarmed eye, in consequence of its brightness and extent, it will give but little trouble in the finding. Having first identified ẞ Andromeda from the directions following No. 63 of the Double Star list (INT. Oвs., vol. ii., 374), we shall perIceive that this star is the lowermost of a short line of stars tending in a np direction: of these the next to B is μ; the third is v; and a little p, or to the right of v, the nebula will be immediately recognized by its misty aspect. It is so conspicuous that, like the nebula in Orion, it is singular that it should have found no place among the "Nebulosa" of the ancients. It was, however, perceived before the invention of the telescope, being represented in a diagram whose date seems to have been towards the close of the 10th century.* Tycho Brahe, strange to say, makes no mention of it, though he carefully observed the adjacent stars; and no further reference to it occurs till 1612, Dec. 15, when Simon Marius first, as it would appear, viewed it with the telescope, and gave a very good account of it. This, however, seems to have drawn little attention, as the great observer Huygens was ignorant of its existence even in 1659; but in 1664 the passage of a comet through that region was the means of bringing it finally into general notice. For a length of time subsequently it was so differently described by different observers, that Le Gentil, *Herschel II. and Smyth have given A.D. 905; upon what authority does not appear; but from Bond's statement it would seem to follow that this is a misprint for 995. Bond in turn has misprinted 1662 for 1612, and the Latin title of one of Bouillaud's treatises, as cited by him, contains several strange errata. He is also mistaken in supposing that no intimation of its having been seen is to be found between 1612 and 1664, as Smyth tells us that Bouillaud, in 1667, mentions its having been noticed 150 years previously by an expert though anonymous astronomer. about the middle of the last century, was led to conclude that it must have varied in form and brightness; an inference which, however, seems to have had no foundation, except in the inadequacy of the instruments then in use. It stands No. 31 in the catalogue of Messier, communicated to the Academy of Sciences in 1771. Sir W. Herschel estimated its dimensions at about 14° in length by upwards of 16' in breadth, and considered it undoubtedly the nearest of all the great nebulæ. His illustrious son in 1826 described it as 66 very bright and of great magnitude, and altogether a most magnificent object," its brilliancy increasing gradually from the edges to the centres where he found a kind of indistinct nucleus of stronger light, about 10" or 12" in diameter. Lamont observing it ten year, afterwards at Munich, with a power of 1200 on a very large achromatic, gave this magnitude about 7". On the mounting of the great achromatic by Merz, of 14 inches aperture and 23 feet focal length, at the Cambridge Observatory, Harvard College, U.S., in 1847, nothing was remarked at first but a vast number of stars of various magnitudes scattered over its surface, an almost star-like nucleus, and a sudden termination of the light all along the np side. But it was subsequently perceived that this abrupt bordering was occasioned by the presence of a long dark streak, 1' broad, beyond which the hazy light recommenced, though with less intensity, for about 4', when it was a second time interrupted by a similar dark band, and again continued till it faded entirely away. Thus one side of the great mass appeared subdivided lengthways by two dark canals, the innermost nearly 1' in length, straight for half that distance, but subsequently bent a little inwards; the other not so extended in length, and inclined to the first at an angle of about 3°. A truly wonderful structure is thus indicated, but, as it would seem, not without a parallel in the heavens, many other instances of arrangements more or less analogous having been pointed out by Sir J. Herschel and the Earl of Rosse; and unless, as the former has suggested, we can conceive the interposition of imperfectly transparent matter nearer to our eyes (which seems very difficult), we must suppose it to be a kind of stratification of the nebulosity presented edgeways to our sight, and giving us but little opportunity of conjecturing what might be the aspect of the luminous mass viewed in a transverse direction. The Earl of Rosse, indeed, seems to incline to the opinion that there may be an extreme fore-shortening of some kind of annular formation, the dark streak being the perspective projection of an interior void; but he has not referred to the complication introduced by the presence of the second streak, which would seem to require a kind of figure-of-eight arrangement; and, with the modesty characteristic of a true philosopher, he admits that his explanation is not very satisfactory. As might be expected, these canals are very difficult teles.. copic objects, and perfectly hopeless with small apertures. I should never have thought of looking for them but for Secchi's valuable piece of information, that the first or innermost canal is the apparent exterior boundary of the nebula in small instruments, as well as his statement that the 6 inches of the Cauchoix achromatic at Rome were sufficient to show the first, with as much of the nebula beyond it as reaches to the second canal. Thus instructed, I attacked the object, a good while ago, with my 5 inches, but so entirely without success that I never repeated the attempt till the memorable night of the earthquake, when, the atmosphere being clear, notwithstanding rather flaring definition, I detected, with a comet eye-piece, power about 29, as well as with a higher power of 64, the lighter tract between the two canals, like a riband of the thinnest gauze drawn over the dark sky, parallel for some distance to the edge of the main body of light, but separated from it by the innermost of these open spaces. Faint as the object was, even as a mere suspicion, and utterly undiscoverable except from previous knowledge, to my great pleasure it was unquestionably there. I then perceived at once the inaccuracy of the expression that Bond had discovered these canals in the nebula, unless it were at the same time stated that he had given to it a previously unsuspected extent,-what he calls the axis of the nebula being nearly the whole of it as visible in inferior instruments,-and that these features were to be sought outside of the nebula as commonly seen, in the newly detected part. I became aware at the same time but too plainly with how much justice Secchi has criticised Bond's figure, as giving too much strength to the light between and outside of the canals; a remark made also by the Earl of Rosse's assistant with the 3-feet reflector; in fact the engraving does not correspond with the attendant description, that "the light between them is two-thirds as bright as it is on the inner side of that which is nearest to the nucleus," since it has been made to appear sensibly equal. In my telescope the difference is extreme; the aperture being only just sufficient to make the feeble ray perceptible, at least to vision such as mine. In other respects, too, Bond's figure is unsatisfactory, the proportional light of the two companion nebulæ being far from accurately given; its defects, however, have been greatly exaggerated in some of the copies, and that given by Arago, if it is to be considered as a copy at all, bears so little resemblance either to the original or to nature that, without a name, it would be difficult to identify it. The accompanying diagram has no pretension to be considered as a picture, having been sketched subsequently it is from memory; F N S THE GREAT NEBULA IN ANDROMEDA. P no Herschel's 18-inch speculum), was discovered in November, 1749, by Le Gentil, and is known as M(essier) 32, or Herschel, jun.) 51 (h 51, in the unassuming notation of that eminent observer). It lies nearly s of the nucleus, at a distance of 26'. The Earl of Rosse expresses little doubt of its resolvability, as to which Bond offers opinion. The other, 18 H V, alias H 44, was discovered by Miss Carolina Herschel, August 27, 1783; it is about 40′ distant from the nucleus in a n p direction, but may be brought, with a low power, into the same field with the great nebula, to which its faintness offers an interesting contrast. I have thus seen it well with 3 inches of aperture. Smyth says that it lies between two sets of stars of four each, each resembling the figure 7, the p group being the smaller. Herschel I. gave its dimensions 30' x 12'; his son, who calls it pretty bright, about half that size (but in moonlight). Bond states that it appears, under high powers, to be a coarse cluster of stars. The nature of the great nebula, however, is less certain than that of its companions, and notwithstanding all the pains that have been taken to ascertain it, it has continued sufficiently mysterious. Smyth indeed states that the 3-foot speculum of the Earl of Rosse showed stellar symptoms at its edge; but we have heard of no confirmation of this with the fourfold light of the larger reflector. De Vico and his colleagues thought they resolved the nucleus in 1841, with 824 of the Cauchoix achromatic, and Secchi had the same impression in some very clear evenings. But this seems very improbable, when Herschel II. states-in a far inferior climate it is true, but |