mical work which concerns itself primarily with observation. Observing played at least as large a part in Herschel's work as in Bradley's, but the aims of the two men were in many ways different. Bradley was interested chiefly in ascertaining as accurately as possible the apparent positions of the fixed stars on the celestial sphere, and the positions and motions of the bodies of the solar system, the former undertaking being in great part subsidiary to the latter. Herschel, on the other hand, though certain of his researches, e.g. into the parallax of the fixed stars and into the motions of the satellites of Uranus, were precisely like some of Bradley's, was far more concerned with questions of the appearances, mutual relations, and structure of the celestial bodies in themselves. This latter branch of astronomy may conveniently be called descriptive astronomy, though the name is not altogether appropriate to inquiries into the physical structure and chemical constitution of celestial bodies which are often put under this head, and which play an important part in the astronomy of the present day.
273. Gravitational astronomy and exact observational astronomy have made steady progress during the nineteenth century, but neither has been revolutionised, and the advances made have been to a great extent of such a nature as to be barely intelligible, still less interesting, to those who are not experts. The account of them to be given in this chapter must therefore necessarily be of the slightest character, and deal either with general tendencies or with isolated results of a less technical character than the rest.
Descriptive astronomy, on the other hand, which can be regarded as being almost as much the creation of Herschel as gravitational astronomy is of Newton, has not only been greatly developed on the lines laid down by its founder, but has received—chiefly through the invention of spectrum analysis (§ 299)—extensions into regions not only unthought of but barely imaginable a century ago. Most of the results of descriptive astronomy—unlike those of the older branches of the subject—are readily intelligible and fairly interesting to those who have but little knowledge of the subject; in particular they are as yet to a considerable extent independent of the mathematical ideas and language
