CHAP, vii.] Southern Stars. 283 



The volume of your " Account of Flainsteed " must be my 

 companion to the last, but I will take care it shall be safely 

 delivered to my nephew. 



If I will not lose another post I must conclude with the 

 assurance of ever remaining with great regard, 



My dear Sir, 

 Your much obliged and humble servant, 



C. HERSCHEL. 



SIR JOHN HERSCHEL TO MISS HERSCHEL. 



March 8, 1836. 



DEAR AUNT, 



Maggie desires me to finish this for her, but she has 

 not left me room to write at length. So I will only devote 

 this space to one point in your last letter which requires reply. 

 F have not got Gauss's apparatus, and I am not sufficiently 

 acquainted with his method of observing to construct one for 

 myself. Besides which it is quite out of my power to under- 

 take any extensive series of observations, being anxious to 

 get home, and having still so much to do, both in observa- 

 tion and reduction, that I really shall hardly be able to ac- 

 complish all I have already in hand. This comet [Halley's] 

 has been a great interruption to my sweeps, and I hope and 

 fear it may yet be visible another month. Unluckily when 

 I sailed from England I left all my volumes of Poggendorff 

 and the Nachrichten behind me, and .none of the former 

 and very few of the latter have reached me here. I fear it 

 is now too late to send home for anything, and I have two 

 series of observations, viz., of the comparative brightness 

 of the southern stars, and of the photometric estimation of 

 their magnitudes the former just commencing, the latter 

 not yet begun, which I must do. Pray explain this to 

 Gauss Astronomical news I have little, but one 



