Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/862

840 observatory at three o'clock, where an important photograph was secured. In the evening he went to the ship for dinner, but was only able to lie on one side, and took some chlorodyne. He then persisted in going ashore and to his own quarters to sleep, in a violent rain. He passed a bad night, and was very ill on the following morning, the time of the eclipse, and permitted himself to be assisted over the half mile to the observatory, but would not be carried in a stretcher. Though very much exhausted when he reached the observatory, "as the important moment approached he seemed to rally, and during the minutes of the eclipse seemed to be himself again, and showed no signs of illness or exhaustion. There were two photographic instruments in use—one, an old one, which had often been in use before; the other was the special corona graphic instrument prepared for the occasion, of which Father Perry himself took charge. He was so alert and self-possessed during the eclipse that his friends about him hoped he was not so ill, but he gave way immediately after, and with much difficulty reached his quarters in the hospital." On Sunday night the critical nature of his disease, dysentery, became evident. On Wednesday he was better, and the ship set sail for Demerara. Friday afternoon his mind began to wander, and in an hour and twenty minutes afterward he died. Before he quite lost consciousness "he thought himself again engaged in 'the supreme moment of the scientific mission which had so long filled his thoughts,' and 'began to give his orders as during the short moments of the eclipse.' "

Steps were taken a few months after Father Perry's death to establish a memorial of him, to consist of a new fifteen-inch telescope, which, with the house in which it stood, should be called the Father Perry Memorial, the works done with which should be published under his name.

of "partial impact" is suggested by Prof. A. W. Bickerton, of the New Zealand University, to explain the sudden appearance and rapid disappearance of "new stars." Recognizing the fact that enormous masses of incandescent matter can not cool in a few weeks, the author observes, as quoted in Nature: "A typical new star is probably a thousand times as bright as our sun; it appears suddenly and disappears in a year. . . . The formation of such a body is difficult to explain on any theory except that of impact, but to explain its disappearance is more difficult still. It is estimated that it will take the sun ten million years to lose half of its luster. Think of a sun a thousand times as bright cooling in a year! The idea is absurd." But if we accept Mr. Lockyer's theory that some stars are not coherent bodies like our sun, but masses of meteorites which in the case of new stars and variables collide with one another, the difficulty is much less. We have no longer an enormous mass all aglow, but numerous scattered masses, vastly smaller, and capable of rapid cooling.