3^ 



consequently, this vacancy was a favourable opportunity for uniting 

 tho piofessorsliip with the observatory. As might have been ex- 

 pected, great exertions were made to place Mr Henderson in the 

 situation, but, for tho present, inefFcctually, from the circumstance 

 that tho Government had resolved to postpone any appointment, un- 

 til it had been maturely considered on what footing the professorship 

 could be placed, with the greatest prospect of success to the science 

 of astronomy. Another opening occurred witliin a few months of tiiis, 

 occasioned by the death of Dr T. Young. Shortly before his decease, 

 he delivered to Professor Rigaud of Oxford, a memorandum, recom- 

 mending Mr Henderson as his successor in the superintendence 

 of the Nautical Almanac. The appointment did not take place, but 

 there exists perhaps no higher testimony to Mr Henderson's merit 

 than this recommendation, when it is remembered that it arose out of 

 his scientific reputation, altogether unaffected by private friendship, 

 and that Dr Young ranks among the very highest of the philoso- 

 phers of the present century. 



Although disappointed in the instances we have mentioned, a situa- 

 tion shortly fell in Mr Henderson's way, which appeared likely to 

 establish him in a suitable maimer. On the death of Mr Fallows, 

 the astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, his qualifications were 

 so well known to the parties with whom the appointment lay, that 

 the office was offered to him without any solicitation on his part, or 

 application on that of his friends. Mr Henderson accepted the ap- 

 pointment, and sailed for the Capo in January 1832. Immediately 

 on his arrival there, he entered on his duties with ardour ; and so 

 indefatigable were his exertions that he amassed a most valuable 

 aeries of observations, and found time, besides, to prepare and trans- 

 mit to the Royal and Astronomical Societies, various papers con- 

 nected with the science. The principal results of his labours at 

 the Cape were, the determination of the latitude and longitude of his 

 station — of the positions of stars near the South Pole, for fixing the 

 polar positions of his instruments — of the amount of refraction near 

 the horizon — and of the moon's horizontal parallax ; together with 

 observations on the planet Mars, for the purpose of computing his 

 parallax, and that of the sun — of Encke's and Biela's comets — of 

 occultations of fixed stars by the moon — of a transit of Mercury— 

 and of between 6000 and 6000 declinations. Prior to his appoint- 

 ment to the Cape Observatory, Mr Henderson had had slight symp- 

 toms of a disease of the heart, and he soon found that the labours and 

 anxieties inci<lent to his position, togetlier with the serious disadvan- 



