Produced by deaurider, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Transcriber’s Notes Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation has been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. Italics are represented thus _italic_, =bold=, superscripts thus y^{en} and subscripts thus x_{1}. The footnotes are placed at the end of the book. [Illustration: The moon. From a photograph taken at the Lick Observatory. [_Frontispiece._ ] _THE UNIVERSITY SERIES_ A Short History of Astronomy BY ARTHUR BERRY, M.A. FELLOW AND ASSISTANT TUTOR OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON _Wagner._ Verzeiht! es ist ein gross Ergetzen Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen. Zu schauen wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gebracht, Und wie wir’s dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht. _Faust._ O ja, bis an die Sterne weit! GOETHE’S _Faust_. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1899 PREFACE. I have tried to give in this book an outline of the history of astronomy from the earliest historical times to the present day, and to present it in a form which shall be intelligible to a reader who has no special knowledge of either astronomy or mathematics, and has only an ordinary educated person’s power of following scientific reasoning.