Part 6 (1/2)

There is sorandiose and majestic in his statement of the ultimate destiny of the Galaxy:

”To hi on the skirts of space”

”--Since the stars of the Milky Way are permanently exposed to the action of a pohereby they are irresistibly drawn into groups, westars they will be gradually coes of accu period of the globular form, and total insulation; from which it is evident that the Milky Way must be finally broken up and cease to be a stratum of scattered stars

”The state into which the incessant action of the clustering power has brought it at present, is a kind of chronometer that may be used to h we do not know the rate of going of this mysterious chrono up of the Milky Way affords a proof that it cannot last forever, it equally bears witness that its past duration cannot be admitted to be infinite”

(1814)

HERSCHEL'S relations with his coteh seldom intimate This peace was broken but by one unpleasant occurrence In the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1792, SCHROETER had communicated a series of observations made with one of HERSCHEL'S own telescopes on the atmospheres of _Venus_, the Moon, etc

It was not only an account of phenomena which had been seen; it was accompanied by hts and dimensions for ant The adjective will not see e say that the very existence of the mountains themselves is to-day more than doubtful

The appearances seen by SCHROETER were described by hiood faith, and si upon them was defective, and the measures which he made were practically valueless This paper, printed in the _Transactions_ of the Royal Society, to which SCHROETER had not before contributed, appears to have irritated HERSCHEL

No doubt there were not wanting members of his own society who hinted that on the Continent, too, there were to be found great observers, and that here, at least, HERSCHEL had been anticipated even in his own field I have always thought that the memoir of HERSCHEL which appeared in the next volume of the _Transactions_ (1793), _Observations on the Planet Venus_, was a rejoinder intended far more for the detractors at home than for the astronomer abroad The review is conceived in a severe spirit The first idea seems to be to crush an opposition which he feels The truth is established, but its establishment is hardly the _first_ object

It seems as if HERSCHEL had alance, which his whole life shoas entirely foreign to his nature All through the review he does not once mention SCHROETER'S naun by me in April, 1777, has been continued down to the present timeThe result of o if I had not flatteredthe diurnal motion of _Venus_, which has still eluded my constant attention as far as concerns its period and directionEven at this present ti extracts if it did not seem incumbent on me to examine by what accident I caht as to exceed four, five, or even six tihest of our mountainsThe sa _Venus_ and _Saturn_ All of which being things of which I have never taken any notice, it will not be amiss to show, by what follows, that neither want of attention, nor a deficiency of instru these ed border of _Venus_, and these flat, spherical forms on _Saturn_”

The reply of SCHROETER (1795) is teives full justice to his critic

It would hardly be worth while tothese years there certainly existed a feeling that HERSCHEL undervalued the labors of his cotemporaries

This ieneral habit of not quoting previous authorities in the fields which he orking

A careful reading of his papers will, I think, show that his definite indebtedness to his _cotely sain and again, and alith appreciation Certainly he seems to show a vein of annoyance that the papers of CHRISTIAN MAYER, _De novis in coelo sidereo phaenoen von Fixsterntrabanten_ (1778), should have been quoted to prove that thethe parallax of the fixed stars by means of observations of those which were double, was not entirely original with himself

There is direct proof that it was so,[22] and if this was not forthco it would be unnecessary, as he has aue of Double Stars One is re powers by the impatience of his comments

His proposal to call the newly discovered n that he wished to discriminate between the discoveries of PIAZZI and OLBERS and his own discovery of URanus[23]

He takes pains to quietly put this on one side in one of his papers, showing that he was cognizant of the existence of such a feeling

I am tempted to resurrect from a deserved obscurity a notice of HERSCHEL'S _Observations on the Two Lately Discovered Celestial Bodies_ (_Philosophical Transactions_, 1802), printed in the first voluh Review_, silory of England, was subject

The reviewer sets forth the principal results of HERSCHEL'S observations, and, after quoting his definition of the new teroes on to say:

”If a new name must be found, why not call theree, be descriptive of, or at least consistent with, their properties? Why not, for instance, call them _Concentric Comets_, or _Planetary Cole term must be found, why may we not coin such a phrase as _Planetoid_ or _Conht, as distinguished from his powers of mere observation This distinction, it may be said, exists only in the reviewer's mind; there was no such distinction in fact If ever a series of observations was directed by profound and reasonable thought, it was HERSCHEL'S own