On the chemical constitution of the stars

I could have wished that the classification of star spectra had been the only question submitted to us for discussion. The subject is important and difficult enough in itself; there are m any points on which opinions might have been profitably exchanged, and I think we might have arrived at some general consensus of opinion which would have left us more fit to form a sound judgment on the fundamental questions brought forward in the second portion of Professor Lockyer’s paper, in which we are directly challenged to accept the dissociation theory in its full generality.