OUR SUN'S VARIATIONS OF HEAT 135 



and lost to sight till Libri discovered them, and 

 made them the common property of science. But, 

 resolved not to be baffled, Herschel turned to the 

 rise and fall of the price of wheat at Windsor as an 

 indication of the warmth or coldness of the sun's 

 rays. It was his only resource, and it was an idea 

 worthy of a baffled man of science. But critics in 

 the highest quarters attacked and ridiculed this seeker 

 after truth as if he were guilty of supreme folly. 

 Leaders of thought in every branch of science and 

 in every department of life have to bear the brunt 

 of ridicule from learned ignorance ! l 



These were the first steps taken by Herschel, it may 

 be said, in his quest after the plan on which Almighty 

 Wisdom built the world of suns and systems. A 

 farther step forward was made when he addressed 

 himself to ascertain the motion of the sun and solar 

 system through space. That there was such a motion 

 he did not doubt. Some had held the same faith 

 before him; astronomers as able had refused it a 

 hearing. He converted it from faith to fact. What 

 it means is that our sun with his most distant planet 

 and comet, with every particle of matter that owns 

 his sway, is travelling onward through space, round 

 a centre of force apparently, and constrained by 

 Newton's law of gravitation. Are these facts or 

 fancies, leading features in the plan of creation or 

 dreams of a mere enthusiast? Herschel not only 

 believed they were facts ; he set himself to prove it. 



1 The tables he took advantage of were those given by Adam Smith 

 in The Wealth of Nations. The ridicule that was heaped upon him 

 may be seen in the Edinburgh Review, and in a letter signed J. M., 

 Scots Magazine, 1807, p. 329. 



