A Budget of Paradoxes Volume I Part 33

"D'Alembert,[785] Euler,[786] and Clairaut,[787]

Though they increased our store, sir, Much further had been seen to go Had they tippled a little more, sir!

Lagrange[788] gets mellow with Laplace,[789]

And both are wont to say, sir, The _philosophe_ who's not an a.s.s Will drink his bottle a day, sir!

"Astronomers! what can avail Those who calumniate us; Experiment can never fail With such an apparatus: Let him who'd have his merits known Remember what I say, sir; Fair science shines on him alone Who drinks his bottle a day, sir!

{383} "How light we reck of those who mock By this we'll make to appear, sir, We'll dine by the sidereal[790] clock For one more bottle a year, sir: But choose which pendulum you will, You'll never make your way, sir, Unless you drink--and drink your fill,-- At least a bottle a day, sir!"

Old times are changed, old manners gone!

There is a new Mathematical Society,[791] and I am, at this present writing (1866), its first President. We are very high in the newest developments, and bid fair to take a place among the scientific establishments. Benjamin Gompertz, who was President of the old Society when it expired, was the link between the old and new body: he was a member of _ours_ at his death.

But not a drop of liquor is seen at our meetings, except a decanter of water: all our heavy is a fermentation of symbols; and we do not draw it mild. There is no penny fine for reticence or occult science; and as to a song! not the ghost of a chance.

1826. The time may have come when the original doc.u.ments connected with the discovery of Neptune may be worth revising. The following are extracts from the _Athenaeum_ of October 3 and October 17:

LE VERRIER'S[792] PLANET.

We have received, at the last moment before making up for press, the following letter from Sir John Herschel,[793] {384} in reference to the matter referred to in the communication from Mr. Hind[794] given below:

"Collingwood, Oct. 1.

"In my address to the British a.s.sociation a.s.sembled at Southampton, on the occasion of my resigning the chair to Sir R. Murchison,[795] I stated, among the remarkable astronomical events of the last twelvemonth, that it had added a new planet to our list,--adding, 'it has done more,--it has given us the probable prospect of the discovery of another. We see it as Columbus saw America from the sh.o.r.es of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our a.n.a.lysis, with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.'--These expressions are not reported in any of the papers which profess to give an account of the proceedings, but I appeal to all present whether they were not used.

"Give me leave to state my reasons for this confidence; and, in so doing, to call attention to some facts which deserve to be put on record in the history of this n.o.ble discovery. On July 12, 1842, the late ill.u.s.trious astronomer, Bessel,[796] honored me with a visit at my present residence.

On the evening of that day, conversing on the great work of the planetary reductions undertaken by the Astronomer Royal[797]--then in progress, and since published,[798]--M. Bessel remarked that the motions of Ura.n.u.s, as he had satisfied {385} himself by careful examination of the recorded observations, could not be accounted for by the perturbations of the known planets; and that the deviations far exceeded any possible limits of error of observation. In reply to the question, Whether the deviations in question might not be due to the action of an unknown planet?--he stated that he considered it highly probable that such was the case,--being systematic, and such as might be produced by an exterior planet. I then inquired whether he had attempted, from the indications afforded by these perturbations, to discover the position of the unknown body,--in order that 'a hue and cry' might be raised for it. From his reply, the words of which I do not call to mind, I collected that he had not then gone into that inquiry; but proposed to do so, having now completed certain works which had occupied too much of his time. And, accordingly, in a letter which I received from him after his return to Konigsberg, dated November 14, 1842, he says,--'In reference to our conversation at Collingwood, I _announce_ to you (_melde_ ich Ihnen) that Ura.n.u.s is not forgotten.' Doubtless, therefore, among his papers will be found some researches on the subject.

"The remarkable calculations of M. Le Verrier--which have pointed out, as now appears, nearly the true situation of the new planet, by resolving the inverse problem of the perturbations--if uncorroborated by repet.i.tion of the numerical calculations by another hand, or by independent investigation from another quarter, would hardly justify so strong an a.s.surance as that conveyed by my expressions above alluded to. But it was known to me, at that time, (I will take the liberty to cite the Astronomer Royal as my authority) that a similar investigation had been independently entered into, and a conclusion as to the situation of the new planet very nearly coincident with M. Le Verrier's arrived at (in entire ignorance of his conclusions), by a young Cambridge mathematician, Mr. Adams;[799]--who will, I hope, {386} pardon this mention of his name (the matter being one of great historical moment),--and who will, doubtless, in his own good time and manner, place his calculations before the public.

"J. F. W. HERSCHEL."

_Discovery of Le Verrier's Planet._

Mr. Hind announces to the _Times_ that he has received a letter from Dr.

Brunnow, of the Royal Observatory at Berlin, giving the very important information that Le Verrier's planet was found by M. Galle, on the night of September 23. "In announcing this grand discovery," he says, "I think it better to copy Dr. Brunnow's[800] letter."

"Berlin, Sept. 25.

"My dear Sir--M. Le Verrier's planet was discovered here the 23d of September, by M. Galle.[801] It is a star of the 8th magnitude, but with a diameter of two or three seconds. Here are its places:

h. m. s. R. A. Declination.

Sept. 23, 12 0 14.6 M.T. 328 19' 16.0" -13 24' 8.2"

Sept. 24, 8 54 40.9 M.T. 328 18' 14.3" -13 24' 29.7"

The planet is now retrograde, its motion amounting daily to four seconds of time.

"Yours most respectfully, BRuNNOW."

"This discovery," Mr. Hind says, "may be justly considered one of the greatest triumphs of theoretical astronomy;" and he adds, in a postscript, that the planet was observed at Mr. Bishop's[802] Observatory, in the Regent's Park, {387} on Wednesday night, notwithstanding the moonlight and hazy sky. "It appears bright," he says, "and with a power of 320 I can see the disc. The following position is the result of instrumental comparisons with 33 Aquarii:

Sept. 30, at 8h. 16m. 21s. Greenwich mean time-- Right ascension of planet 21h. 52m. 47.15s.

South declination 13 27' 20"."

THE NEW PLANET.

"Cambridge Observatory, Oct. 15.

"The allusion made by Sir John Herschel, in his letter contained in the _Athenaeum_ of October 3, to the theoretical researches of Mr. Adams, respecting the newly-discovered planet, has induced me to request that you would make the following communication public. It is right that I should first say that I have Mr. Adams's permission to make the statements that follow, so far as they relate to his labors. I do not propose to enter into a detail of the steps by which Mr. Adams was led, by his spontaneous and independent researches, to a conclusion that a planet must exist more distant than Ura.n.u.s. The matter is of too great historical moment not to receive a more formal record than it would be proper to give here. My immediate object is to show, while the attention of the scientific public is more particularly directed to the subject, that, with respect to this remarkable discovery, English astronomers may lay claim to some merit.

"Mr. Adams formed the resolution of trying, by calculation, to account for the anomalies in the motion of Ura.n.u.s on the hypothesis of a more distant planet, when he was an undergraduate in this university, and when his exertions for the academical distinction, which he obtained in January 1843, left him no time for pursuing the research. In the course of that year, he arrived at an approximation to the position of the supposed planet; which, however, he did not consider to be worthy of confidence, on account of his not {388} having employed a sufficient number of observations of Ura.n.u.s. Accordingly, he requested my intervention to obtain for him the early Greenwich observations, then in course of reduction;--which the Astronomer Royal immediately supplied, in the kindest possible manner. This was in February, 1844. In September, 1845, Mr. Adams communicated to me values which he had obtained for the heliocentric longitude, excentricity of orbit, longitude of perihelion, and ma.s.s, of an a.s.sumed exterior planet,--deduced entirely from unaccounted-for perturbations of Ura.n.u.s. The same results, somewhat corrected, he communicated, in October, to the Astronomer Royal. M. Le Verrier, in an investigation which was published in June of 1846, a.s.signed very nearly the same heliocentric longitude for the probable position of the planet as Mr.

Adams had arrived at, but gave no results respecting its ma.s.s and the form of its...o...b..t. The coincidence as to position from two entirely independent investigations naturally inspired confidence; and the Astronomer Royal shortly after suggested the employing of the Northumberland telescope of this observatory in a systematic search after the hypothetical planet; recommending, at the same time, a definite plan of operations. I undertook to make the search,--and commenced observing on July 29. The observations were directed, in the first instance, to the part of the heavens which theory had pointed out as the most probable place of the planet; in selecting which I was guided by a paper drawn up for me by Mr. Adams. Not having hour xxi. of the Berlin star-maps--of the publication of which I was not aware--I had to proceed on the principle of comparison of observations made at intervals. On July 30, I went over a zone 9' broad, in such a manner as to include all stars to the eleventh magnitude. On August 4, I took a broader zone and recorded a place of the planet. My next observations were on August 12; when I met with a star of the eighth magnitude in the zone which I had gone over on July 30,--and which did not then {389} contain this star. Of course, this was the planet;--the place of which was, thus, recorded a second time in four days of observing. A comparison of the observations of July 30 and August 12 would, according to the principle of search which I employed, have shown me the planet. I did not make the comparison till after the detection of it at Berlin--partly because I had an impression that a much more extensive search was required to give any probability of discovery--and partly from the press of other occupation. The planet, however, was _secured_, and two positions of it recorded six weeks earlier here than in any other observatory,--and in a systematic search expressly undertaken for that purpose. I give now the positions of the planet on August 4 and August 12.

Greenwich mean time.

Aug. 4, 13h. 36m. 25s. {R.A. 21h. 58m. 14.70s.

{N.P.D. 102 57' 32.2"

Aug. 12, 13h. 3m. 26s. {R.A. 21h. 57m. 26.13s.

{N.P.D. 103 2' 0.2"

"From these places compared with recent observations Mr. Adams has obtained the following results:

Distance of the planet from the sun 30.05 Inclination of the orbit 1 45'

Longitude of the descending node 309 43'

Heliocentric longitude, Aug. 4 326 39'

"The present distance from the sun is, therefore, thirty times the earth's mean distance;--which is somewhat less than the theory had indicated. The other elements of the orbit cannot be approximated to till the observations shall have been continued for a longer period.

"The part taken by Mr. Adams in the theoretical search after this planet will, perhaps, be considered to justify the suggesting of a name. With his consent, I mention _Ocea.n.u.s_ as one which may possibly receive the votes of astronomers.--I {390} have authority to state that Mr. Adams's investigations will in a short time, be published in detail.

"J. CHALLIS."[803]

ASTRONOMICAL POLICE REPORT.

"An ill-looking kind of a body, who declined to give any name, was brought before the Academy of Sciences, charged with having a.s.saulted a gentleman of the name of Ura.n.u.s in the public highway. The prosecutor was a youngish looking person, wrapped up in two or three great coats; and looked chillier than anything imaginable, except the prisoner,--whose teeth absolutely shook, all the time.

Policeman Le Verrier[804] stated that he saw the prosecutor walking along the pavement,--and sometimes turning sideways, and sometimes running up to the railings and jerking about in a strange way. Calculated that somebody must be pulling his coat, or otherwise a.s.saulting him. It was so dark that he could not see; but thought, if he watched the direction in which the next odd move was made, he might find out something. When the time came, he set Brunnow, a constable in another division of the same force, to watch where he told him; and Brunnow caught the prisoner lurking about in the very spot,--trying to look as if he was minding his own business. Had suspected for a long time that somebody was lurking about in the neighborhood. Brunnow was then called, and deposed to his catching the prisoner as described.

_M. Arago._--Was the prosecutor sober?