Bond,
employing the splendid 15-inch refractor of the Harvard Observatory,
noticed, September 16, a minute star situated in the plane of Saturn's
rings. The same object was discerned by Mr. Lassell on the 18th. On the
following evening, both observers perceived that the problematical speck
of light kept up with, instead of being left behind by the planet as it
moved, and hence inferred its true character.[227] Hyperion, the seventh
by distance and eighth by recognition of Saturn's attendant train, is of
so insignificant a size when compared with some of its fellow-moons
(Titan is but little inferior to the planet Mars), as to have suggested
to Sir John Herschel[228] the idea that it might be only one of several
bodies revolving very close together--in fact, an _asteroidal
satellite_; but the conjecture has, so far, not been verified.

The coincidence of its duplicate discovery was singularly paralleled two
years later. Galileo's amazement when his "optic glass" revealed to him
the "triple" form of Saturn--_planeta tergeminus_--has proved to be,
like the laughter of the gods, "inextinguishable." It must revive in
every one who contemplates anew the unique arrangements of that world
apart known to us as the Saturnian system. The resolution of the
so-called _ansae_, or "handles," into one encircling ring by Huygens in
1655, the discovery by Cassini in 1675 of the division of that ring into
two concentric ones, together with Laplace's investigation of the
conditions of stability of such a formation, constituted, with some
minor observations, the sum of the knowledge obtained, up to the middle
of the last century, on the subject of this remarkable formation. The
first place in the discovery now about to be related belongs to an
American astronomer.

William Cranch Bond, born in 1789 at Portland, in the State of Maine,
was a watchmaker, whom the solar eclipse of 1806 attracted to study the
wonders of the heavens. When, in 1815, the erection of an observatory in
connection with Harvard College, Cambridge, was first contemplated, he
undertook a mission to England for the purpose of studying the working
of similar institutions there, and on his return erected a private
observatory at Dorchester, where he worked diligently for many years.
Then at last, in 1843, the long-postponed design of the Harvard
authorities was resumed, and on the completion of the new establishment,
Bond, who had been from 1838 officially connected with