rly as 1620, according to R. Wolf (_Ges. der Astr._,
p. 587), Father Scheiner made the experiment of connecting a telescope
with an axis directed to the pole, while Chinese "equatoreal armillae,"
dating from the thirteenth century, existed at Pekin until 1900, when
they were carried off as "loot" to Berlin. J. L. E. Dreyer,
_Copernicus_, vol. i., p. 134.]

[Footnote 337: _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 350.]

[Footnote 338: _Astr. Jahrbuch_, 1799 (published 1796), p. 115.]

[Footnote 339: _Month. Not._, vol. xli., p. 189.]

[Footnote 340: _Phil. Trans._, vol. xlvi., p. 242.]

[Footnote 341: Grant, _Hist. of Astr._, p. 487.]

[Footnote 342: _Pop. Vorl._, p. 546.]

[Footnote 343: _Phil. Trans._, vol. xcix., p. 105.]

[Footnote 344: _Report Brit. Ass._, 1832, p. 132.]

[Footnote 345: _Pop. Vorl._, p. 432.]

[Footnote 346: C. T. Anger, _Grundzuege der neucren astronomischen
Beobachtungs-Kunst_, p. 3.]

PART II

RECENT PROGRESS OF ASTRONOMY

CHAPTER I

_FOUNDATION OF ASTRONOMICAL PHYSICS_

In the year 1826, Heinrich Schwabe of Dessau, elated with the hope of
speedily delivering himself from the hereditary incubus of an
apothecary's shop,[347] obtained from Munich a small telescope and began
to observe the sun. His choice of an object for his researches was
instigated by his friend Harding of Gottingen. It was a peculiarly happy
one. The changes visible in the solar surface were then generally
regarded as no less capricious than the changes in the skies of our
temperate regions. Consequently, the reckoning and registering of
sun-spots was a task hardly more inviting to an astronomer than the
reckoning and registering of summer clouds. Cassini, Keill, Lemonnier,
Lalande, were unanimous in declaring that no trace of regularity could
be detected in their appearances or effacements.[348] Delambre
pronounced them "more curious than really useful."[349] Even Herschel,
profoundly as he studied them, and intimately as he was convinced of
their importance as symptoms of solar activity, saw no reason to suspect
that their abundance and scarcity were subject to orderly alternation.
One man alone in the eighteenth century, Christian Horrebow of
Copenhagen, divined their periodical character, and foresaw the time
when the effects of the sun's vicissitudes upon the globes revolving
round him might be investigated wit