Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/197

admiration excited by the mention of his name that cannot fail to be gratifying to me, as his son. In fact, I find myself received wherever I go by all men of science, for his sake, with open arms, and I find introductions perfectly unnecessary. At Turin I sent up my card to Prof. Plana, of the Observatory, one of the most eminent mathematicians of the age, who received me like a brother, and made my stay at Turin, which I prolonged a week for the sake of his society, very pleasant. He married a niece of Lagrange (not of Lalande), and both he and his wife were full of enquiries about my "celebrated sister," (for everybody seems to think me your brother, instead of nephew), and made me tell them a thousand particulars about you. The same reception, but, if possible, still more friendly, and the same curiosity (and, I may add, the same mistake) I met with at Modena, from Professor Amici, an artist and a man of science of the first eminence. He is the only man who has, since my father, bestowed great pains on the construction of specula, and I do assure you that his ten-foot telescopes with twelve-inch mirrors are of very extraordinary perfection. Among other of your enquiring friends I should not omit the Abbé Piazzi, whom I found ill in bed at Palermo, and who is a fine respectable old man, though I am afraid not much longer for this world. He remembered you personally, having himself visited Slough.

Naples, Aug. 20th. 1824.—I take the first moment of leisure to proceed with this. I made the ascent of Etna without particular difficulty, though with excessive fatigue. The ascent from Catania is through the village of Nicolosi, about ten miles from Catania, almost every step of which is covered with the tremendous stream of lava which, in 1669, burst from the flanks of the mountain, near Nicolosi, and overwhelmed the city. Here I found a M. Gemellaro, who was so good as to make corresponding observations of