198 Caroline Lncrctia HerschcL [1826. 



line which denotes that the Milky Way is in those places, 

 and if you see an L and find a cluster of stars thereabout, 

 I shall claim it as one of those I mentioned in my last letter 

 to you. It was the assistant's business to give notice when 

 such marks or any nebulte in the lapping over of the sweep 

 either above or below were within reach, by making the work- 

 man go a few turns higher or lower. (N.B. No more than 

 is convenient without deranging the present sweep.) But I 

 am forgetting myself, and fear I am tiring you unneces- 

 sarily, and will only add that if your father wanted at any 

 time to review or to show any of his planetary or other re- 

 markable nebuhe to his friends, the time and P.D. was, by 

 the variation of its nearest star in Wollaston's or Bode's 

 catalogue, brought to the intended time of observation, and 

 P.D. comp. of latitude, with allowance for refraction, 

 gave the quadrant for setting the telescope. 



But after all, clear Nephew, I beg you will consider your 

 health. Encroach not too much on the hours which should 

 be given to sleep. I know how wretched and feverish one 

 feels after two or tliree nights waking, and I fear } r ou have 

 been too eager at your twent} r -foot, and your telling me that 

 you have been unwell for some months, and now only begin 

 to feel better, makes me very unhappy, and I shall not be 

 comfortable till I see by your next that }'ou are perfectly 

 well again ; I am quite impatient to see what you have 

 to sa}' about the parallax of the fixed stars, but on such 

 occasions I am vexed that your father did not live to know 

 of your grand discoveries. You say something of a paper 

 on the longitude of Paris ; I hope you Avill think of Gauss 

 when you have anything new. 



Among the letters from your father's correspondents in 

 alphabetical parcels you will find under the letter P. some 

 of Pond's, who was about the end of the last century in 

 Lisbon, with an excellent seven-foot telescope of your 



