and Astronomical Notices. 361 



6. Great Refiector for a Southern Country. — With reference to 

 the allusion made in the last Notices to the refusal of the Government 

 to entertain the recommendation of the British Association to send 

 a large Rosseian telescope to a southern country, a friend, upon whose 

 opinion I place very great weight, has informed me that he considers 

 that I was decidedly wrong in attributing the refusal of the Govern 

 ment to their dislike of the expense ; he says that it was not their ex- 

 pressed reason, nor does he believe it to have been their influencing 

 reason ; but that rather he should fancy, though he does not pro- 

 fess to know what the private opinion of Government might be, that 

 they considered the scheme was not yet in a practicable condition ; 

 that reflecting telescopes had not yet been brought to the proper cer- 

 tainty of performance under ordinary official hands, nor had any suf- 

 ficient and appropriate person yet appeared for being appointed to 

 the office. 



I gladly take, therefore, the first opportunity of expressing my 

 regret for having erroneously supposed the existence of such a.motive 

 as that of expense, without sufficient examination of reports ; and of 

 giving a full statement of what the influencing reasons of Govern- 

 ment may reasonably and favourably be considered to have been 

 in this matter. Whether those reasons be right or wrong, the real 

 cause which has led to the refusal of a request so fully discussed and 

 highly approved of by such a body as the physical section of the 

 British Association, and by the Royal Society, cannot be too exten- 

 sively known ; if right, it may lead to the attention of astronomers 

 being turned to the weak points of the proposition for its improve- 

 ment ; if wrong, it may lead to the idea being brought up again 

 and more successfully urged. 



If we are to judge of the proper time for such a request having 

 arrived, by enquiring whether the reflecting telescope has reached per- 

 fection, or even the highest degree of it eventually attainable by man, 

 then the step of the British Association is decidedly immature ; but on 

 such principles the time will never come, for to suppose that it will 

 arrive certainly within any definite period is as rash as the conclusion 

 which the French astronomers came to in the days of Louis XIV., 

 when, concluding and boasting that astronomical instruments had then 

 reached their ultimate degree of excellence, they proclaimed that the 

 time had cqme for achieving the conquest of southern skies, and the 

 Abbe de la Caille was accordingly sent to the Cape of Good Hope for 

 that purpose. But although he used in a most masterly style all the 

 instruments he was furnished with, his voyage did not render one 

 whit less necessary the recent expedition of Sir J. Herschel, with a 

 telescope compared to which, La Caille's was not to be mentioned. 

 The history of astronomy, shewing as it does, — that every successive 

 proclamation of instruments having obtained their utmost available 

 excellence, has ended in the confusion of all advocating such views, — 

 demonstrates that the real or supposed shortcomings of the modern 

 reflector from ideal perfection are not the grounds for judging of the 



