the astronomers of the world. The cor- 

 respondence between him and the Rector 

 of Thornhill does not appear to have been 

 maintained ; but as Herschel was elected 

 a Fellow of the P.oyal Society on 6th 

 December 1781, the two men of science 

 \vould now have opportunities of personal 

 intercourse at the meetings of the Society 

 and the convivial gatherings of the Royal 

 Society Club. Herschel in subsequent 

 years took occasion, in a paper read before 

 the Royal Society, to refer appreciatively 

 to the work done at Thornhill. "Mr 

 Michell," he said, " has also considered 

 the stars as gathered together into groups 

 (Phil. Trans, vol. 57, 1767, p. 249) which 

 agrees with the subdivision of our great 

 system here pointed out. He founds an 

 elegant proof of this on the computation 

 of probabilities, and mentions the Pleiades, 

 the Praesepe Cancri, and the nebula (or 

 cluster of stars) in the hilt of Perseus's 

 sword as instances 1 ." 



1 Phil. Trans. 75 (1785). 



94 



