ttention, nor
a deficiency of instruments, would occasion my not perceiving these
mountains of more than twenty-three miles in height, this jagged
border of _Venus_, and these flat, spherical forms on _Saturn_."

The reply of SCHROETER (1795) is temperate and just. It does him honor,
and he generously gives full justice to his critic.

It would hardly be worth while to mention this slight incident if it
were not that during these years there certainly existed a feeling
that HERSCHEL undervalued the labors of his cotemporaries.

This impression was fostered no doubt by his general habit of not
quoting previous authorities in the fields which he was working.

A careful reading of his papers will, I think, show that his definite
indebtedness to his _cotemporaries_ was vanishingly small. The work of
MICHELL and WILSON he alludes to again and again, and always with
appreciation. Certainly he seems to show a vein of annoyance that the
papers of CHRISTIAN MAYER, _De novis in coelo sidereo phaenomenis_
(1779), and _Beobachtungen von Fixsterntrabanten_ (1778), should have
been quoted to prove that the method proposed by HERSCHEL in 1782 for
ascertaining the parallax of the fixed stars by means of observations of
those which were double, was not entirely original with himself.

There is direct proof that it was so,[22] and if this was not
forthcoming it would be unnecessary, as he has amply shown in his
Catalogue of Double Stars. One is reminded of his remarks on the use of
the high magnifying powers by the impatience of his comments.

His proposal to call the newly discovered minor planets _asteroids_
(1802) was received as a sign that he wished to discriminate between the
discoveries of PIAZZI and OLBERS and his own discovery of URANUS.[23]

He takes pains to quietly put this on one side in one of his papers,
showing that he was cognizant of the existence of such a feeling.

I am tempted to resurrect from a deserved obscurity a notice of
HERSCHEL'S _Observations on the Two Lately Discovered Celestial Bodies_
(_Philosophical Transactions_, 1802), printed in the first volume
of the _Edinburgh Review_, simply to show the kind of envy to which even
he, the glory of England, was subject.

The reviewer sets forth the principal results of HERSCHEL'S
observations, and, after quoting his definition of the new term
asteroid, goes on to say:

"If a new name must be found, why not call them by some appellation