XVI 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 



of the manuscripts are copies from books, others contain calculations of his own. On 

 October 17, 1835, he wrote from Landulph to his parents telling them that he had 

 watched for the comet three weeks before without success, and that at last he 

 had seen it: "you may conceive with what pleasure I viewed this, the first comet 

 I had ever had a sight of, which at its visit 380 years ago threw all Europe into 

 consternation, but which now affords the highest pleasure to astronomers by proving 

 the accuracy of their calculations and predictions." The annular eclipse of the sun of 

 May 15, 1836, interested him greatly and on May 13 he wrote from Stoke a long letter 

 to his brother Thomas at Lidcot in order to give him "a brief description of the 

 large eclipse of the sun which will take place next Sunday." He proceeds "As 

 the almanacs only give the time &c. to this eclipse for London and some other 

 remarkable places, I have taken some pains to calculate it, and I herewith send 

 you, what I believe has not been done for some time, a calculation of this eclipse 

 for the meridian and latitude of Litcott." He finds that it will begin at 1 h. 28 m. p.m., 

 that the greatest eclipse will be at 3 h. m. and that it will end at 4 h. 22 m., the 

 digits eclipsed being 10. He also gives a diagram showing the eclipse as it will appear 

 from Lidcot. At the conclusion of the letter, he adds " There will also happen 

 next Thursday evening between 6 and 7 o'clock a remarkable conjunction of the 

 Moon and the planets Jupiter and Venus, which I wish you would observe. These 

 planets are now approaching each other and will then be very near, as also will the 

 moon." This early calculation of an eclipse (the manuscript of which still exists) is 

 especially interesting in connexion with the remarkable theoretical calculations which 

 he was to undertake and carry out so successfully only a few years later. On April 

 24, 1837, he wrote from Stoke "I observed the eclipse last Thursday with a small spy- 

 glass which I borrowed : the moon looked most delightful after the end of the eclipse. 

 At the request of Mr Bate, a young man of my acquaintance, who reports for the 

 Telegraph, I wrote next morning a few lines on the eclipse, which were inserted in 

 the paper the following day.... Mr Richards, the editor of the Telegraph, tells me that 

 my article on the eclipse has been copied into several of the London papers." 



He was also interested in practical astronomy, and there was long preserved in the 

 home at Lidcot a simple instrument constructed by him, when very young, in order to 

 determine the elevation of the sun. It consisted of a vertical circular card with graduated 

 edge, from the centre of which a plumb bob was suspended. Two small square pieces 

 of card, with a pin-hole in each, projected from the circular disc at right angles to its 

 face at opposite ends of a diameter. The card was to be so placed that the sun shone 

 through the pin-holes, and the elevation was read off on the circle. It is also re- 

 membered that on the window sill at Lidcot he had made lines or notches to mark 

 the positions of shadows at noon. 



He showed such signs of mathematical power that in 1837 the idea of his going 

 to Cambridge was entertained. He accordingly entered St John's College, Cambridge, 

 in October, 1839. During his undergraduate career he was invariably the first man of 

 his year in the college examinations, and in 1843 he graduated as Senior Wrangler, being 

 also first Smith's Prizeman. In the same year he was elected Fellow of his college. 



His attention was drawn to the irregularities in the motion of Uranus by reading 

 Airy's report upon recent progress in astronomy in the Report of the British Asso- 



