| Description | Family transcription of Sir John Herschel's original diary. The volume describes Herschel's scientific and social life, with meteorological and a few astronomical observations. The diary commences with Herschel's familiar bronchial complaints, which eventually abate. He sends manuscript books of his Homer translation to Macmillan on 12 January and 'Excerpta Homerica' to Matthew Arnold for Miss Colling the next day. By 22 January he is correcting proof sheets of the Iliad. He writes to Stachan to say he is ready to go to press with 'Familar Lectures on Science' on 7 February. He notes various trees blown down by storm on 12 February, recommencing work on photoplatinates at this time. Herschel referees a paper by [William] Huggins from 23 February. News of William Whewell's death comes on 7 March and Herschel attends his funeral in Cambridge. Herschel reads a report in The Times on 29 March about 'a ship propelled precisely on my "squirt" system...Why did I never publish this? - it is an old favourite scheme of mine to get rid of that abominable screw'. He records sunspot observations from 18 April, visiting Mr Hewlett to see his sunspot apparatus and equitorial telescope on 27 April. Lt. John Herschel returns from India and acccompanies his father to a Greenwich Observatory visitation on 2 June. The committee (at the Royal Society) decides to allocate a grant to improve Rumcker's observations. 'Visitation - Robinson versus De La Rue cantankerous & spiteful (as usual).' On 2 July Herschel is back at Collingwood House, marking out positions of double stars in his father's copy of Flamsteed's Atlas. On 28 July he notes 'news of the successful completion of the line of the Atlantic telegraph...' Mr Carter visits him on 13 October to discuss [Francis] Ronalds' share in the discovery of the electric telegraph: Ronalds 'Wrote to Lord Melbourne about a Government Electric Telegraph & [John] Barrow reply - "begs to acquaint Mr R that there is no occasion for telegraphic communication - and that there will never be any other telegraph than what is now in use"...Mr Carter showed me the letter!' Herschel's Homer is published on that day. On 5 December he dispatches a box containing his synopsis and catalogue of William Herschel's double star observations, including the autograph manuscript, to the Royal Astronomical Society - 'Thus completing a work of most distressing labour which has consumed almost my whole waking time since July or beginning of August...' He writes to Sabine about the Indian telescope at Masouri on 5 December.
With a note on the first page '1866.' |