ASTRONOMY AND METEOROLOGY. 383 



accordingly provided and arranged a rude apparatus, and commenced 

 observing, whenever the duties of his profession afforded him sufficient 

 leisure; and at length, on the 2Gth of March, 18-39, about four o'clock in the 

 afternoon, he saw a small dark body enter the sun's disk, its circumference 

 was well defined. Its angular diameter, as seen from the earth, was very 

 small; and he estimated it as less than one-fourth the size of Mercury, which 

 he had seen with the same telescope, and the same magnifying power, when 

 it passed over the sun on the 8th of May, 1845. His calculations from his 

 data also led him to the conclusion that the planet's distance from the sun 

 was about 0.1427, its period less than twenty days, its ascending node situ- 

 ated at about thirteen degrees of longitude, and its inclination between 

 twelve and thirteen degrees. 



Possessed of a sensitive and reserved nature, and doubting the reality of his 

 discovery, M. Lescarbault hesitated to make it known, and it was only after 

 vainly waiting nine months, to verify his observation by another view of the 

 object, that he prepared a letter, narrating what he thought he had seen, and 

 sent it to LeVerrier. The latter, considering that his official position (Direc- 

 tor of the National Observatory) required that he should probe such state- 

 ments to the bottom, and prevent the success of anything like an attempt to 

 palm off a fraud on the public, at once visited Orgeres, and, accompanied by 

 a single friend, made his way direct and unannounced to the house of M. 

 Lescarbault. The following graphic account of what here passed is given 

 by M. Moigno, in the " Cosmos," and is stated to be given nearly as recounted 

 by M. LeVerrier to an assembly of friends on his return: 



On their arrival, M. LeVerrier knocked loudly at the door, which was 

 opened by the doctor himself, but his visitor declined to give his name. The 

 simple, modest, timid Lescarbault, small in stature, stood abashed before the 

 tall LeVerrier, who, in blunt intonation, addressed him thus : " It is then 

 you, sir, who pretend to have discovered the intra-Mercurial planet, and who 

 have committed the grave offence of keeping your discovery secret for nine 

 months ! I warn you that I have come with the intention of doing justice to 

 your pretensions, and of demonstrating either that you have been dishonest 

 or deceived. Tell me unequivocally what you have seen." The lamb-like 

 doctor trembled like an aspen-leaf at this rude summons, and stammered out 

 the following reply : 



" On the 26th of March, about four o'clock, I turned my telescope to the 

 sun, when to my surprise I saw, at a small distance from its margin, a black 

 spot, well defined, and perfectly round, advancing upon the disk of the sun. 

 A customer called me away, and hurrying him off as fast as I could, I came 

 back to my glass, Avhen I found the round spot had continued its transit, and 

 I saw it disappear from the opposite margin of the sun, after a projection upon 

 it of an hour and a half." " You will then have determined," asks LeVer- 

 rier, "the time of the first and last contact; and you are aware that the 

 observation of the first contact is one of such extreme delicacy that profes- 

 sional astronomers often fail in observing it?" -"Pardon me, sir," replies 

 the doctor, " I do not pretend to have seized the precise moment of contact. 

 The round spot was upon the disk when I first perceived it. I measured 

 carefully its distance from the margin, and, expecting that it would describe 

 an equal distance, I counted the time which it took to describe this second dis- 

 tance, and I thus determined approximately the instant of its entry.' ' To 

 count the time is easy to say, but where is your chronometer? " " My chro- 

 nometer is a watch with minutes, the faithful companion of my professional 



