Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/131

 1840-50] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 109 belief, and it is curious to find Herschel in 1847, while exhibiting a month's hourly drawings by Griesbach, recommending, without any mention of Schwabe, as " highly desirable to secure an unbroken series of drawings exhibiting a continuous view of the changes in the sun's surface for every day in every year in future, and as near an approach to it in past years as can now be recovered. It seems high time that some attempt of the kind should be made on a systematic and regular plan, as the only probably effectual means of arriving at a knowledge of the laws which govern these mysterious phenomena, and the periods, if any, which they observe in their formation, and thence of elucidating the nature of the sun itself." He goes on to recommend the Society to start what might have been the beginning of a Solar Research Union (November 1847). But that was for another epoch ; and it is time now that 1840-50 gave place to 1850-60.