work directed to a totally different end; but so far we have
not considered a case in which the discoverer entered upon an enterprise
from which he was positively dissuaded.

[Sidenote: Nothing expected from spots.]

In the next chapter we shall come across a very striking instance of this
type; but even in the discovery that there was a periodicity in the solar
spots, with which I propose to deal now, Herr Schwabe began his work in
the face of deterrent opinions from eminent men. His definite announcement
was first made in 1843, though he had himself been convinced some years
earlier. In 1857 the Royal Astronomical Society awarded him their gold
medal for the discovery; and in the address delivered on the occasion the
President commenced by drawing attention to this very fact, that
astronomers who had expressed any opinions on the subject had been
uniformly and decidedly against the likelihood of there being anything
profitable in the study of the solar spots. I will quote the exact words
of the President, Mr. Manuel Johnson, then Radcliffe Observer at Oxford.

"It was in 1826 that Heinrich Schwabe, a gentleman resident in
Dessau, entered upon those researches which are now to engage our
attention. I am not aware of the motive that induced him--whether any
particular views had suggested themselves to his own mind--or whether
it was a general desire of investigating, more thoroughly than his
predecessors had done, the laws of a remarkable phenomenon, which it
had long been the fashion to neglect. He could hardly have
anticipated the kind of result at which he has arrived; at the same
time we cannot imagine a course of proceeding better calculated for
its detection, even if his mind had been prepared for it, than that
which he has pursued from the very commencement of his career.
Assuredly if he entertained such an idea, it was not borrowed from
the authorities of the last century, to whom the solar spots were
objects of more attention than they have been of late years.

"'Nulla constanti temporum lege apparent aut evanescunt,' says Keill
in 1739.--_Introduct. ad Physic. Astronom._, p. 253.

"'Il est manifest par ce que nous venons de rapporter qu'il n'y a
point de regle certaine de leur formation, ni de leur nombre et de
leur figure,' says Cassini II. in 1740.--_Elem d'Astron._, vol. i. p.
82.

"'Il semble qu'el