the lunar mountains, and the Moon being in front of my house late in the evening, I brought my 7-foot reflector into the street, and directed it to the object of my observations. While I was looking into the telescope, a gentleman coming by the place where I was stationed stopped to look at the instrument. When I took my eye off the telescope, he very politely asked if he might be permitted to look in, and expressed great satisfaction at the view. Next morning, the gentleman, who proved to be Dr. Watson, jun. (now Sir William), called at my house to thank me for my civility in showing him the Moon, and told me that there was a Literary Society then forming at Bath and invited me to become a member, to which I readily consented."
About the middle of January, 1780, this society—the Philosophical Society of Bath—began its meetings. Herschel not only attended these, but contributed a considerable number of papers—thirty-one in all—in the course of the next two years. One or two of these dealt with astronomical subjects, such as the height of the lunar mountains, and the variable star Mira Ceti; but most of them were on metaphysical and physical subjects, such as "The Utility of Speculative Enquiries," "On the Existence of Space," and "Experiments in Light". These were nearly all published in 1912 in the "Collected Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel". Through Dr. Watson's influence, Herschel was introduced to scientific circles in London, and he forwarded four communications to the Royal Society before he was elected a Fellow. These were, a paper on "Mira Ceti," read 11th May, 1780; on the "Mountains of the Moon," read the same day; on the "Rotation of the planets on their Axes, with a view to determine whether the Earth's diurnal motion is perfectly equable,"—a remarkable and ingenious paper bearing the stamp of his own peculiar methods of investigation—read 11th January, 1781; and "Account of a Comet," read 26th April, 1781.
