In the next chapter we shall come across a very striking instance of this type; but even in the discovery that there was a periodicity in the solar spots, with which I propose to deal now, Herr Schwabe began his work in the face of deterrent opinions from eminent men. His definite announcement was first made in 1843, though he had himself been convinced some years earlier. In 1857 the Royal Astronomical Society awarded him their gold medal for the discovery; and in the address delivered on the occasion the President commenced by drawing attention to this very fact, that astronomers who had expressed any opinions on the subject had been uniformly and decidedly against the likelihood of there being anything profitable in the study of the solar spots. I will quote the exact words of the President, Mr. Manuel Johnson, then Radcliffe Observer at Oxford. "It was in 1826 that Heinrich Schwabe, a gentleman resident in Dessau, entered upon those researches which are now to engage our attention. I am not aware of the motive that induced him--whether any particular views had suggested themselves to his own mind--or whether it was a general desire of investigating, more thoroughly than his predecessors had done, the laws of a remarkable phenomenon, which it had long been the fashion to neglect. He could hardly have anticipated the kind of result at which he has arrived; at the same time we cannot imagine a course of proceeding better calculated for its detection, even if his mind had been prepared for it, than that which he has pursued from the very commencement of his career. Assuredly if he entertained such an idea, it was not borrowed from the authorities of the last century, to whom the solar spots were objects of more attention than they have been of late years. "'Nulla constanti temporum lege apparent aut evanescunt,' says Keill in 1739.--_Introduct. ad Physic. Astronom._, p. 253. "'Il est manifest par ce que nous venons de rapporter qu'il n'y a point de règle certaine de leur formation, ni de leur nombre et de leur figure,' says Cassini II. in 1740.--_Elém d'Astron._, vol. i. p. 82. "'Il semble qu'elles ne suivent aucune loi dans leur apparitions,' says Le Monnier in 1746.--_Instit. Astron._, p. 83. "'Solar spots observe no regularity in their shape, magnitude, number, or in the time of their appearance or continuance,' says Long in 1764.--_Astron._, vol. ii. p. 472. "'Les apparitions des tâches du soleil n'ont rien de regulier,' says Lalande in 1771.--_Astron._, vol. iii. § 3131, 2nd edit. "And Delambre's opinion may be inferred from a well-known passage in the third volume of his 'Astronomy' (p. 20), published in 1814, where treating of the solar spots he says, 'Il est vrai qu'elles sont plus curieuses que vraiment utiles.'"[4]