distinct." Of these views he writes: "The outer ring is less bright than the inner ring. The inner ring is very bright close to the dividing space, and at about half its breadth it begins to change colour, gradually growing fainter, and just upon the inner edge it is almost of the colour of the dark part of the quintuple belt."[1] A little after he adds: "The shadow of the ring upon Saturn, on each side, is bent a little southwards, so that the apparent curve it makes departs a little from the ring." Looking at these singular companions of the planet across a gulf eight or nine hundred millions of miles wide, it is not surprising that an astronomer prays for "light, more light," to resolve this puzzle of the bright and the dark. It is only an outline of the ring, at the best, that we can expect to obtain from the most careful drawings. But what Herschel did not suspect or imagine about the ring, it would be natural for him to confound with, other features that took a greater hold of his fancy. Of the inner ring he says: "At about half its breadth it begins to change colour," that is, it passes from "very bright" to the darkness of the quintuple belt. Now this was said of the ring as seen and figured in 1794. Compare it with the three rings in the three figures shown in 1792. They are unlike that of 1794. Either the ring had changed, or Herschel was in 1794 looking on two inner rings, a bright or very bright ring, and a dark. This was Professor Bond's discovery in 1850, "a crape ring" half the breadth of the very bright inner ring, between it and the body of the planet. There are thus three well-marked rings in the system of Saturn, a somewhat dark outer, a very
- ↑ Phil Trans., 1794, pp. 54, 57.
