188 Caroline Lucretia Hcrschel. [1825. 



FROM J. F. W. HERSCHEL TO MISS HEESCHEL. 



1825. 



DEAR AUNT, 



I received this afternoon your most valuable packet 

 containing your labours of the last year, which I shall prize, 

 and more than prize shall use myself, and make useful to 

 others. A week ago I had the twenty-foot directed on the 

 nebulte in Virgo, and determined afresh the right ascensions 

 and polar distances of thirty-six of them. These curious 

 objects (having now nearly finished the double stars) I shall 

 now take into my especial charge nobody else can see 

 them. I hope very soon (in a fortnight or three weeks) to 

 be able to transmit to you and to MM. Gauss and Harding 

 our work (Mr. South's and my own) on the double stars, in 

 which you will find some of my father's most interesting 

 <liscoveries placed beyond the reach of doubt. It will con- 

 tain measures of the position and distance of 880 double 

 stars. But Mr. South, who is an industrious astronomer 

 (almost as much so as yourself), has just sent me complete 

 and accurate measures of 279 more, making in all 659. 

 Among these we have now verified not less than seventeen 

 connected in binary systems in the way pointed out by my 

 father, and twenty-eight at least in which no doubt of a 

 material change having taken place can exist. M. Struve, 

 at Dorpat, and M. Amici, in Italy, have also taken up 

 the subject of double stars, and are prosecuting it with 

 vigour. 



I am particularly obliged to you for my father's letters 

 and pocket-book they are to me a real treasure. The 

 style of the Eloge in the Moniteur is very inferior to what I 

 expected from Fourier ; but on the whole it contains nothing 

 materially untrue. The publications enclosed were very 

 acceptable. I wish my uncle had not confined himself to a 



