Royal Astronomical Society. 559 



sionally furnished an account of them to the periodicals of the day. 

 He was greatly respected in his own neighbourhood, having long 

 been treasurer to most of the local charities, and a liberal supporter of 

 them all. He was a native of Greenwich, where he resided till within 

 a few months of his death ; and, for the last thirty-five years, lived in 

 a house which was built by his grandfather, and occupied by him for 

 the first time on the day his son, Mr. Best's father, came of age. 



" Mr. Best retired to Henley-on-Thames, where he died on the 

 morning of May 19, 1840, the day on which he would have com- 

 pleted his seventy-third year, regretted by all who had the pleasure 

 of his acquaintance. 



*' The important discovery of two new planets in our system 

 (Pallas and Vesta) has rendered the name of Olbers familiar to every 

 lover of astronomy. The circumstances that led to this discovery 

 were as singular as they were fortunate ; and show the happy re- 

 sults that may arise from a zealous association of individuals in the 

 steady pursuit of some definite object. The detail of those circum- 

 stances has been so recently given in the obituary of this distin- 

 guished astronomer and mathematician, read at the last anniversary 

 meeting of the Royal Society, that it appears almost needless to 

 repeat them in this place. Yet it may here be stated, that the dis- 

 covery of Pallas at nearly the same distance from the sun as Ceres 

 (which had been discovered in the preceding year) led Olbers to 

 conjecture that they were fragments of a larger planet, which might 

 have been scattered by some great catastrophe, and that, probably, 

 some other portions of the original mass might be found in nearly 

 the same orbit. His diligence was rewarded by the discovery of 

 Vesta, about five years afterwards ; and nearly in the position in 

 which he expected it would be found. The instrument with which 

 he made these discoveries was a very small telescope, and his obser- 

 vatory was a room in the upper part of his house ; thus showing to 

 the world with what slender means the most important results may 

 be obtained. But Olbers was not merely a practical astronomer ; 

 his treatise on the best mode of determining the orbit of a comet, 

 and his improvements and investigations of various astronomical 

 formula?, exhibit him as a mathematician of considerable talent. 

 One of the latest papers relative to astronomy, on which he was 

 employed prior to his death, was on a reform of the constellations, 

 both as to their nomenclature and the arrangement of the stars which 

 limit their boundaries : to which subject he was excited by a passage 

 in the Report of the Council at our last anniversary, wherein it was 

 stated that a revision of this kind was about to be made under the 

 superintendence of a committee appointed by the British Association. 

 The views of Olbers are in perfect coincidence with the object pro- 

 posed ; and in the paper above alluded to, and which has been trans- 

 mitted to the President, he laments the confusion that has been in- 

 troduced by his predecessors, and suggests some useful hints for a 

 remedy *. 



[* For another obituary notice of Dr. Olbers, see Phil. Mag., S. 3., vol. 

 xviii. p. 72.— Ed.] 



