that Herschel undervalued the labors of his cotemporaries.
This impression was fostered no doubt by his general habit of not quoting previous authorities in the fields which he was working.
A careful reading of his papers will, I think, show that his definite indebtedness to his cotemporaries was vanishingly small. The work of Michell and Wilson he alludes to again and again, and always with appreciation. Certainly he seems to show a vein of annoyance that the papers of Christian Mayer, De novis in cœlo sidereo phænomenis (1779), and Beobachtungen von Fixsterntrabanten (1778), should have been quoted to prove that the method proposed by Herschel in 1782 for ascertaining the parallax of the fixed stars by means of observations of those which were double, was not entirely original with himself.
There is direct proof that it was so,[1] and if this was not forthcoming it would be un-
- ↑ Memoir of Caroline Herschel, p. 42.
