CHAP, vi.] Her Nephew s receipt of her History. 213 



rate both the value and the merit of your own services in 

 his cause, but the world does you more justice, and his son 

 feels them a great deal more than he knows how to express. 

 1 shall preserve this as the most precious thing, and you will 

 add to the obligation you have conferred, on me by sending 

 the papers you refer to under the title of No. I. 



The Journals and the mettwursts also came safely ; the 

 Journals contain some very curious matter not known in 

 England, and which comes very opportunely here, where, I 

 am sorry to say, science is going to sleep. 



I have just completed a second Catalogue of double stars, 

 which willbe read at the Astronomical Society (of which I now 

 have the honour to be President) on Friday (May llth) next 

 (if I can get it fairly copied in time). My work in the Review 

 of Nebulae advances slowly, as I can very seldom get a night 

 or two at proper times of the moon and year to sweep. But I 

 find your Catalogue most useful. I always draw out from it 

 a regular working list for the night's sweep, and by that 

 means have often been able to take as many as thirty or forty 

 nebulse in a sweep. I have now secured such a degree of 

 precision in taking the places of objects in the telescope, that 

 the settling stars (which I prepare a list of each night and 

 arrange them in order of E. A. in the working list) cross 

 the wire often on the very beat of the chronometer when 

 they were expected, and not unusually enter the field of 

 view bisected by the horizontal wire of the eye-piece. In 

 short, I reckon my average error in E,. A. in determining 

 the place of a new object by a single observation, not to 

 exceed one second of time, and in Polar distance a quarter 

 of a minute. This you will easily perceive to be a 

 considerable improvement in respect of precision, which 

 is more my aim than it was my father's, whose object 

 was only discovery. I have found a great many nebula? 

 jnot in your Catalogue, and which, therefore, I suppose 



