Annual Address to the Members. xlv 



instruments at his own expense, alike an act of devotion to Science 

 and a noble tribute to the memory of his father. Sir John Herschel 

 was thus never His Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape, but it was to 

 Maclear and the Eoyal Observatory that Herschel appealed when he 

 desired the exact determination of the place of a star, and he never 

 appealed in vain. 



On the other hand, one can imagine what, to a temperament like 

 Maclear's, was the stimulus given by such society and such an 

 example. It was the brightest and most delightful period of 

 Maclear's life ; it set a stamp on the future character of his work and 

 the policy of his directorate, and, if possible, increased his ardour as 

 a diligent observer. To his latest days (and only his very latest days 

 was I privileged to know) he spoke of Sir John Herschel and his 

 times and of all the work — yes, and of all the fun — they had together, 

 with a racy enthusiasm but seldom met with in one beyond the years 

 of middle life, and still more seldom in a man bereft of sight and on 

 his last sick bed. 



Herschel worked at Feldhausen from 1834 to 1838, and during 

 these busy years collected a mass of observations which on his return 

 to England he proceeded to reduce ; finally, in 1817, he published 

 a splendid volume entitled, " Eesults of Astronomical Observations 

 rnade during the years 1834-5-6-7-8 at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 being a completion of a telescopic survey of the whole surface of the 

 visible heavens — commenced in 1825." 



Its most important feature is a complete catalogue of 1707 nebulae 

 and star clusters observed by him in course of his telescopic sweeps, 

 a large proportion of them being observed a number of times. 



Next in importance probably is his list of 2102 double stars 

 detected, and their places, position angles and distances estimated 

 in course of the same sweeps, and a large number of micrometrical 

 measures of some of these stars made with the seven-foot telescope. 

 The work further contains a survey of the Nebeculse or Magellen 

 clouds ; an invaluable series of estimates of the relative magnitudes 

 of the principal fixed stars — by a method of sequences ; an attempt 

 to determine the distribution of stars in space and the constitution of 

 the galaxy, by the process of gauging, — that is by counting the 

 number of stars seen in the field of his telescope in different parts of 

 the sky ; a series of observations of Halley's comet ; many obser- 

 vations of the satellites of Saturn and solar spots, and delineations of 

 the forms of the most striking nebulae and star clusters. 



During his stay at the Cape, Herschel also, at the request of 

 the Cape Government, devoted much time to the problem of 

 education in the young Colony, and, as the result of his experience, 



