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first work on the subject, " Eichard Wagner, and the Music of the Future/' was published in 1874 ; a more comprehensive biography of the master from his pen appeared as the first volume of a series of . lives of "The Great Musicians" 1881. A collection of " Musical Studies," reprinted from the Times, the Fortnightly Review, and other periodicals, appeared in 1880. The work has been translated into Italian by Signor Alberto Visetti, and published at Milan in 1883. In his critical writings Mr. Hueffer warmly espoused the cause of a national English opera, and he has written the libretto of a musical drama, " Colomba " (music by Mr. A. C. Mackenzie) for the English opera season at Drury Lane in 1883. His volume of essays, en- titled " Italian and other Studies," also appeared in 1883.

H U G G I N S, William, F.R.S., D.C.L. (Oxon), LL.D. (Cantab, et Edin.) Ph. D. (Leyden), was born in London, Feb. 7, 1824, and received his early education at the City of London School. He after- wards continued his studies in mathematics, classics, and modern languages with the assistance of private masters. Much of his time was given to exx)erlments in nat\iral philosophy, and he collected ap- paratus by the use of which he gained considerable practical know- ledge of the elementis of chemistry, electricity, magnetism, and other branches of physical science. He became early attached to the sci- ence of astronomy, and, under great difficulties, he observed the planets and some of the double stars be- tween the chimneys of London. He was then residing in the me- tropolis with his parents. In 1852 he was elected a member of the Microscopical Society, and for some years he applied himself with much assiduity to the study, with the aid of the microscope, of animal and vegetable physiology. In 1856 Mr. Huggins erected an observa-

tory at his residence at Upper Tulse Hill, furnished with a good transit instrument, and an equa- torial by Dollond, of five inches aperture. This instrument was re- placed in 1858 by a larger telescope of eight inches aperture, by Alvan Clarke, and mounted equatorially by Cook and Sons, of York. Mr. Huggins occupied himself for some time with observation of double stars, and with careful drawings of the planets Mars, Jupiter, and I Saturn. From the first establish- ment of his observatory it was his desire not to continue in the beaten track of astronomical observation, but, if possible, to bring to bear upon the science of astronomy the practical knowledge he had ob- tained of general physics. The foundation by Kirchhoff of the method of the chemical analysis of distant bodies by means of the prism applied to their light, ap- peared at once, to Mr. Huggins, to furnish him with the means of carrying out his desire. From various causes, however, it was not until the beginning of 1862 that the extension of Kirchhoff's mode of analysis (which had been already applied by the discoverer to the sun) to the planets, the stars, the nebulsB, and comets, was seriously undertaken. For many months he applied himself to the arduous, but necessary, preliminary task of mai>- ping the spectra of about twenty- six of the chemical elements. These researches are printed in the Phi- losophical' Transactio'M for 1864. During part of his prismatic olwer- vation of the stars, he worked with his friend the late Dr. William Allen Miller. Mr. Huggins and Dr. Miller compared the spectra of about fifty stars directly in the in- strument with the spectra of seve- ral terrestrial elements. They found that the stars are hot bodies, simi- larly constituted to our sun, and that they contain many of the sub- stances found on the earth. One of the most remarkable of Mr