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⁵⁵ ‘On the construction of the heavens’, ibid., i, 223–59, and ‘Catalogue of one thousand new nebulae and clusters of stars’, ibid., i, 260–93.

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⁷⁹ Herschel, to Sedgwick, , 04 1845Google Scholar, in Lubbock, , op. cit. (2) p. 78Google Scholar. For John Herschel's approach to method, see Wilson, D. B., ‘Herschel and Whewell's version of Newtonianism’. Journal of the history of ideas, 1974, 35, 79–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the use of central heat and its connexion with the ‘nebular hypothesis’, see Lawrence, P. J., ‘The central heat of the earth: the relation of the nebular hypothesis to geology, 1811–1840’, Harvard University PhD dissertation, 1973.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ For Herbert Spencer on John Herschel, see Spencer, H., ‘The nebular hypothesis’ (07 1858), in Essays, London, 1891, i, 108–81 (116–17)Google Scholar. For John Herschel on geology, see Herschel, J., ‘On the astronomical causes which may influence geological phenomena’, Transactions of the Geological Society, 1832, pp. 293–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare Nichol, J. P., ‘Relation of the nebular hypothesis to geological change’, op. cit. (76, Views), 219–23.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Airy, G., ‘The history and present knowledge of nebulae’, Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1836, 9, 303–12Google Scholar; Nichol, , op. cit. (76, Views), pp. 8–9Google Scholar. See Whitrow, G. J., ‘Some prominent personalities and events in the early history of the Royal Astronomical Society’, Quarterly journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1970, 11, 89–104.Google Scholar

⁸² Nichol, J. P., op. cit. (76, Views), pp. 166–7, 206–7Google Scholar. Compare Nichol's account of the Orion nebula: (p. 127): ‘Within that looming mass, whatever be its final destiny, there are doubtless wide and systematic relationships:… nay, who can tell, who that has looked on those monuments of bygone worlds—the fossil relics which mark the early progress of our own planet—but, this amorphous mass may bear within it, laid up in its dark bosom, the germs, the elements of that LIFE which in coming ages will bud and blossom and effloresce into manifold and growing forms, until it becomes fit harbourage and nourishment to every varying degree of intelligence, and every shade of moral sensibility and greatness!’