Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/17

1820-30] appeared. It will serve a double purpose to quote the whole sentence, italicising the word to be struck out.

It is rather puzzling to find that it is impossible to strike out the word not as directed if the sense of the passage is to be preserved. The emendation adopted in Mem., 1, 4, is:

The whole construction has, of course, been altered. Sir John's complaint seems to have been a little hasty, for comparison of the Address as fully revised in the Memoirs with the copy put through the press by Baily, only reveals one serious alteration of the sense. The original reads:—

but the last two words have clearly got into the wrong place, and in the revised version are restored to the other leg of the contrast—"a few eminently skilful observers in Britain as at present, but throughout the whole astronomical world."

It is, however, interesting to see what did ultimately happen to one sentence which Sir John had written, and then struck out in MS., but which Baily nevertheless printed. When Sir John got his dozen copies he again struck it out, and again Baily pleaded for it.

The transposition enables us to identify the passage, which is as follows:—

Yet it is possible that some bodies, of a nature altogether new, and whose discovery may tend in future to disclose the most important secrets in the system of the universe, may be concealed