186 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



In addition to her arduous and engrossing duties as sec- 

 retary and assistant to her brother, Caroline found time to 

 prepare a number of works for the press. Among these 

 were a Catalogue of Eight Hundred and Sixty Stars Ob- 

 served by Flamsteed but not Included in the British Cata- 

 logue and A General Index of Reference to Every Observa- 

 tion of Every Star in the Above-mentioned British Cata- 

 logue. She had the honor of having these two works pub- 

 lished by the Koyal Society. Another, and a more valuable 

 work, was The Reduction and Arrangement in the Form of 

 Catalogue, in Zones, of All the Star-Clusters and Nebulae 

 Observed by Sir W. Herschel in His Sweeps. It was for 

 this catalogue that a gold medal was voted to her by the 

 Royal Astronomical Society in 1828 a production that 

 was characterized as "a work of immense labor " and "an 

 extraordinary monument to the unextinguished ardor of a 

 lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science. " To 

 her nephew, Sir John Herschel, it proved invaluable, as it 

 supplied the needful data "when he undertook the review 

 of the nebulae of the northern hemisphere. ' ' It was also a 

 fitting prelude to Sir John's Cape Observations, a copy of 

 which great work she received from her nephew nearly 



Herschel, written four years before her death, she exhibits, in an 

 amusing fashion, her jealous spirit anent the great telescope of Lord 

 Eosse. ' ' They talk of nothing here at the clubs, ' ' she writes, ' ' but of 

 the great mirror and the great man who made it. I have but one an- 

 swer for all Der Kerl ist ein Narr the fellow is a fool. ' ' 



Even "Every word said in her own praise seemed to be so much 

 taken away from the honour due to her brother. She had lived so 

 many years in companionship with a truly great man, and in the 

 presence of the unfathomable depths of the starry heavens, that praise 

 of herself seemed childish exaggeration. ' ' And notwithstanding the 

 honor and recognition which she received from learned men and 

 learned societies for her truly remarkable astronomical labors, her 

 dominant idea was always the same "I am nothing. I have done 

 nothing. All I am, all I know, I owe to my brother. I am only a tool 

 which he shaped to his use a well-trained puppy-dog would have 

 done as much." Op. cit., pp. IX, 335 and 346. 



