a second as the speed with which our system travels in its vast orbit inspires confidence both from the trustworthiness of the determinations (Mr. Seabroke’s) serving as its basis and from its intrinsic probability.  Accepting it provisionally, we find the parallax of Alcyone = about 0.02’, implying a distance of 954,000,000,000,000 miles and a light journey of 163 years.  It is assumed that the whole of its proper motion of 2.61’ in forty-five years is the visual projection of oar own movement toward a point in R.A. 261 deg., Decl. +25 deg..

Thus the parallax of the two stars which we suspect to lie between us and the stars forming the genuine group of the Pleiades, at perhaps two-thirds of their distance, can hardly exceed 0.03’.  This is just half that found by Dr. Gill for [xi] Toucani, which may be regarded as, up to this, the smallest annual displacement at all satisfactorily determined.  And the error of the present estimate is more likely to be on the side of excess than of defect.  That is, the stars in question can hardly be much nearer to us than is implied by an annual parallax of 0.03”, and they may be considerably more remote.

Dr. Elkin concludes, from the minuteness of the detected changes of position among the Pleiades, that “the hopes of obtaining any clew to the internal mechanism of this cluster seem not likely to be realized in an immediate future;” remarking further:  “The bright stars in especial seem to form an almost rigid system, as for only one is there really much evidence of motion, and in this case the total amount is barely 1 per century.”  This one mobile member of the naked eye group is Electra; and it is noticeable that the apparent direction of its displacement favors the hypothesis of leisurely orbital circulation round the leading star.  The larger movements, however, ascribed to some of the fainter associated stars are far from harmonizing with this preconceived notion of what they ought to be.

On the contrary, so far as they are known at present, they force upon our minds the idea that the cluster may be undergoing some slow process of disintegration.  M. Wolf’s impression of incipient centrifugal tendencies among its components certainly derives some confirmation from Dr. Elkin’s chart.  Divergent movements are the most strongly marked; and the region round Alcyone suggests, at the first glance, rather a very confused area of radiation for a flight of meteors than the central seat of attraction of a revolving throng of suns.

There are many signs, however, that adjacent stars in the cluster do not pursue independent courses.  “Community of drift” is visible in many distinct sets; while there is as yet no perceptible evidence, from orbital motion, of association into subordinate systems.  The three eighth-magnitude stars, for instance, arranged in a small isosceles triangle near Alcyone, do not, as might have been expected a priori, constitute a real ternary group.