70 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



to account for difficulties in their art. The French 

 astronomers held to their faith in a comet moving 

 round the sun in an orbit nearly circular. Herschel, 

 praised everywhere as an observer " of great ardour 

 and ingenuity," stood aside from the friendly strife. 

 All observers were in debt to Bode, who found that 

 a star, marked No. 964 in Mayer's catalogue, had been 

 observed by him in 1756, had then been lost sight of, 

 and was probably the stranger. Abbe Boscovich is 

 said to have been the first to prove that the orbit 

 was an ellipse ; but to Lexell, Professor of Astronomy 

 at St. Petersburg, is assigned the honour of showing 

 that the newly found body was not a comet, but a 

 planet, distant from the sun about nineteen times as 

 far as the earth. 1 All with a name for science, from 

 Laplace downward, took part in the friendly strife. 



It has been said that this discovery was an accident ; 

 it has been also said that, if Herschel had not made 

 it at the time he did, some other observer would before 

 long have had the luck to fall in with the stranger. 

 These criticisms are not creditable to those by whom 

 they were made. Call it accident or chance, the fact 

 remains that this novice, looking out for what he 

 could find in the heavens, and with instruments im- 

 proved by himself, discovered an unknown planet, and 

 extended the boundaries of the solar system to twice 

 the distance that had been received for thousands of 

 years. Such accidents bring fame, and are only called 

 luck by the envious. 



One of the last-found planets of our solar system 

 was discovered about a year ago, also by accident, but 

 to the great honour of the discoverer. He was looking 

 1 Robison, Edin., Phil Trans, i. 305. 



