\\ 1) STAR A MISNOMi 129 



re and ascertain the hidden proeentei of an 



rk.-r, they would have been inval 

 us a serviceable hypothec! - for future effort*. Boldly 

 and with all reverence, he set himself to open 

 eloaed hand of Almighty Wiadom, and find what that 

 Power had kept hid. Others laboured in this cause 

 before hm. i.ut - we are indebted solely to the genius 



istry of Dr. Hersehel for perfecting 

 sagacious views, and supporting them by a body of 

 evidence am nearly to demount ratio ii 



first point he laid down was that there is 



reason "strongly to suspect that there is not, 



mesa of speaking, one fixed star in th> 



heavens." Fixed stars is a name we have been led 



to use, because, unlike the planets or wanderers, 



they seem never to change their places in the sky; 



absolute rest in any one of these stars is im- 

 possible except, it may be, as a result of i. 

 balanced forces. Hersehel was beginning in 1783 A.D. 



.0 same starting-point as the famous Hipparchus 

 nearly two thousand years before, who " observed a 

 new star which appeared in his own day, and which 

 led him to tx>li< \ . that the same thing might happen 

 frequently, and that the stars considered fixed might 

 be in in The proper motion, as it is called, of 



of the brightest stars was suspected nearly a 

 century before Herschel's time and was afterwards 

 fully proved. What the nature of that motion may 

 be, might be guessed by astronomers, but was really 



1 Sir Darid Brewster in his edition of Ferguson's Agronomy (1829), 

 tt.199. He is referring spedsllj to oebaUB, of which Bench, 

 the position, magnitude, and structure of no fewer than MOO." 



UUnde.i. 152; Pliny, ii. 26. 



9 



