NEWS FROM HERSCHEL'S PLANET. 129 



alone of the astronomers of his time was capable of dis- 

 covering Uranus otherwise than by a fortunate accident. 

 Others might have lighted on the discovery indeed, 

 we shall presently see that the real wonder is that 

 Uranus had not been for many years a recognised mem- 

 ber of the solar system but no one except Herschel 

 could within a few minutes of his first view of the planet 

 have pronounced confidently that the strange orb (what- 

 ever it might be) was not a fixed star. 



I do not propose to enter here, at length, into the 

 series of researches by which it was finally demonstrated 

 that the newly-discovered body was not a comet but a 

 planet, travelling on a nearly circular path around the 

 sun, at about twice Saturn's distance from that orb. 

 With this part of the work Herschel had very little to 

 do. To use Professor Pritchard's words, having ascer- 

 tained the apparent size, position, and motion of the 

 stranger, ' Herschel very properly consigned it to the 

 care of those professional astronomers who possessed 

 fixed instruments of precision in properly constituted 

 observatories to Dr. Maskelyne, for instance, who was 

 then the Astronomer-Eoyal at Greenwich, and to 

 Lalande, who presided over the observatory in Paris.' 

 As the newly-discovered body travelled onwards upon 

 its apparent path, astronomers gradually acquired the 

 means of determining what its real path might be. 

 At first they were misled by erroneous measures of the 

 stranger's apparent size, which suggested that the sup- 

 posed comet had in the course of the first month after 

 its discovery approached to within half its original 



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