Notes and Queries, Number 174, February 26, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. — John Shaqi
Notes and Queries, Number 174, February 26, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Number 174, February 26, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
As to the discoverer of a previously unknown planet, your inquirer should
be told, that more is necessary than its merely coming within the field of
an observer's telescope, even if it attracts his notice. Some years before
1781, the year in which Herschel discovered the planet which should
perpetuate his name, Lalande had noted down an observation of a star, of a
certain magnitude, in a position where afterwards no such star could be
found, but where calculations since made, from the known orbit of that
planet, prove that it must then have been. By failing to continue his
observation of it, till it should have changed its place amongst the fixed
stars, Lalande lost the discovery. And though Herschel's much more powerful
telescope enabled him to perceive, on a first inspection, that it had a
defined disc, more observations were required to enable him to say that it
could not be a comet shorn of his beams: whilst, as to the last discovered
planets, I think we have been told that their apparent size is but that of
a star of the ninth order, in decreasing magnitude; and no part of the
heavens has been so accurately mapped as to give an observer reason to
conclude, from catching sight of one of these planetary fragments, that he
has detected an obscure wanderer not usually seen in that locality. But if
its appearance leads his practised eye to suspect that it shines with but
borrowed light, and that induces him to continue his nightly watch, he
receives his reward, if it be so, and announces the existence of another
planet.
HENRY WALTER.
* * * * *
STORY OF GENOVEVA.
(Vol. vii., p. 133.)
The story of Genoveva is a popular German legend, and is given in No. 8 of
the _Volksbücher_, published at Leipzig, 1838.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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