Page:The wonders of optics (1869).djvu/172

164 about his having given a dinner in the interior of the tube to a select party of friends, but as the diameter of the telescope was only a little more than 4 feet, the entertainment, to say the least of it, would have proved somewhat inconvenient to the guests. Another story, which was credited by great numbers of people, was that he had discovered inhabitants in the moon, but that he hesitated to make the matter public for fear he should be prosecuted for spreading atheistical notions. In fact, the tales told of Sir William Herschel's telescope were endless, and caused the astronomer great inconvenience by attracting crowds of idle people to the neighbourhood of Slough, where he vainly endeavoured to carry on his investigations in peace and quietness. It was in vain that these silly assertions were disproved again and again. Having once believed them, people were slow to reject them, and the story of the dinner was told over and over again for many years.



The instrument above described is one of those known as front view telescopes, on account of the image of the star being reflected from the surface of the mirror, which was placed obliquely at the bottom of the tube in front of the observer, who examined it by means of the eye-piece without any other reflection taking place,