E-text prepared by Eric Hutton
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Typographical errors noticed during the preparation of this text have been underlinedlikethis. A list has also been placed at the end.

 

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A POPULAR HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY

DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A. AND C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.[Pg i]

[Pg iii]

A POPULAR

HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY

DURING

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

BY

AGNES M. CLERKE

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1908

First Edition, Post 8vo., published 1885

Second Edition, Post 8vo., published 1887

Third Edition, Demy 8vo., published 1893

Fourth Edition, Demy 8vo., published 1902

Fourth Edition, Post 8vo., reprinted February, 1908

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

Since the third edition of the present work issued from the press,the nineteenth century has run its course and finished its record.A new era has dawned, not by chronological prescription alone, butto the vital sense of humanity. Novel thoughts are rife; freshimpulses stir the nations; the soughing of the wind of progressstrikes every ear. "The old order changeth" more and moreswiftly as mental activity becomes intensified. Already many ofthe scientific doctrines implicitly accepted fifteen years ago beginto wear a superannuated aspect. Dalton's atoms are in process ofdisintegration; Kirchhoff's theorem visibly needs to be modified;Clerk Maxwell's medium no longer figures as an indispensablefactotum; "absolute zero" is known to be situated on an asymptoteto the curve of cold. Ideas, in short, have all at once becomeplastic, and none more completely so than those relating toastronomy. The physics of the heavenly bodies, indeed, finds itsbest opportunities in unlooked-for disclosures; for it de

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