1 70 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



and grief to the friends of Newton, Hooke, Flamsteed, 

 Leibnitz, Bernoulli, Laplace, and which render their 

 lives sometimes most unpleasant reading. A quarrel 

 for the maintenance of truth and right is a necessity 

 of life in a world, where falsehood and wrong seem 

 often to have the best of it ; but the meannesses and 

 selfishness of scientific quarrels have little or nothing 

 of this nobility about them. "The result of my 

 observations would have been communicated long 

 ago," Herschel wrote for the Royal Society, " if I had 

 not still flattered myself with the hopes of some better 

 success, concerning the diurnal motion of Venus; 

 which, on acccount of the density of the atmosphere 

 of this planet, has still eluded my constant attention 

 as far as concerns its period and direction. Even at 

 the present time I should hesitate to give the following 

 extract from my journals, if it did not seem incumbent 

 on me to examine by what accident I came to overlook 

 mountains in this planet, which are said to be of such 

 enormous height, as to exceed four, five, and even six 

 times the perpendicular elevation of Cimbora9a, the 

 highest of our mountains. The same paper which 

 contains the lines I have quoted, gives us likewise 

 many extraordinary accounts, equally wonderful : such 

 as hints of the various and singular properties of the 

 atmosphere of Saturn." Then he proceeds to speak of 

 Schroeter's measures as " defective " ; the mirror of the 

 7-f eet reflector used as " considerably tarnished " ; and 

 the "calculations (as) so full of inaccuracies, that it would 

 be necessary to go over them again." The Lilienthal 

 observer did not like this plain speaking. 



To these somewhat sharp, but perhaps deserved 

 criticisms, Schroeter replied in 1795. " Though it is a 



