A RI2TG OF WORLDS. 



475 



ninth magnitude in the constellation Taurus, in a 

 place where he felt sure, from his recollection of 

 the region, that there had previously been no 

 star of that degree of brightness. He communi- 

 cated the observation to Encke, of Berlin ; and 

 on December 14th they rediscovered it in the 

 place to which by that time it had removed. It 

 was found to be an asteroid traveling at a dis- 

 tance almost midway between that of Vesta and 

 that of Ceres. Hencke requested Encke to name 

 the new planet, and that astronomer selected for 

 it the name of Astrsea. 



On July 1st, Hencke discovered a sixth aste- 

 roid, which Gauss named at his request, calling 

 it Hebe. In the same year, and only six weeks 

 later, our English astronomer Hind discovered 

 the asteroid Iris; and on October 18th he dis- 

 covered another, to which Sir J. Herschel, at his 

 request, assigned a name, selecting (somewhat 

 unsuitably, perhaps, for an October discovery) 

 the name Flora. 



Since that date, not a year has passed with- 

 out the discovery of at least one asteroid, as in 

 1848, 1849, and 1859. Two were discovered in 

 1851, 1863, and 1869; three in 1850, 1864, 1865, 

 and 1870; four in 1853, 1855, and 1867; five in 

 1856, 1860, 1862, and 1871 ; six in 1854, 1858, 

 1866, 1873, and 1874 ; eight in 1852 and 1857 ; 

 ten in 1861 ; eleven in 1872 ; twelve in 1868 and 

 1876; and seventeen in 1875. During last year 

 six were discovered. The astronomer who has 

 hitherto been most successful in the search for 

 asteroids is Peters, of Clinton, United States (Prof. 

 Peters is a German by birth, however), with 

 twenty-seven ; next Luther, of Bilk, with twenty ; 

 and third, Watson, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with 

 twenty. Goldschmidt, a French painter, discov- 

 ered fourteen; Borelly and our Hind, ten. These 

 six have thus discovered 101 of the 175 asteroids 

 at present known. After them come De Gasparis 

 and Palisa, with nine each ; Pogson, of Madras, 

 with seven ; Chacornac and Paul Henry, with six 

 each ; Prosper Henry and Tempel, with five ; and 

 Perrotin, with four, bringing up the total to 149. 

 Of the remaining twenty-three, three were discov- 

 ered by Ferguson ; two by Olbers, Hencke, and 

 Tuttle ; and Piazzi, Harding, Graham, Marth, 

 Laurent, Searle, Forster d' Arrest, Tietjen, Ste- 

 phan, Coggia, Schulhof, Schiaparelli, and Knorre, 

 have each discovered one. 



Some coincidences which would seem curious, 

 but for the great number of asteroids already 

 known, have naturally occurred during the prog- 

 ress of discovery. Thus the asteroid Irene was 

 discovered by De Gasparis, independently, a few 



days after Hind had marked it for his own (May 

 19, 1851). En revanche, De Gasparis discovered 

 Psyche on March 19, 1852, while Hind, who had 

 seen the planet on January 18th, but had been pre- 

 vented by bad weather from reobserving it, satis- 

 fied himself on March 18th of its planetary charac- 

 ter. While Hind was planning a vigorous search 

 after the planet, news reached him that De Gas- 

 paris had discovered it. Goldschmidt, on Sep- 

 tember 19, 1857, discovered two asteroids, which 

 chanced that night to be within a distance from 

 each other equal to about one-third of the ap- 

 parent diameter of the moon. No other astron- 

 omer has ever had the good fortune to capture 

 two of these wandering bodies on the same night 

 and within the same telescopic field of view. 

 But the planet Alexandra was discovered by 

 Goldschmidt, at Paris, on September 10, 1858, 

 and the planet Pandora by Mr. Searle, of Albany, 

 New York, on the same night, only a few hours 

 later. The asteroid Melete, really discovered on 

 September 9, 1857, was not recognized as a new 

 planet till 1858, having been for a long time mis- 

 taken for the asteroid Daphne. The latter had 

 been lost since May, 1856, and Goldschmidt, its 

 discoverer, was looking for it in September, 1857, 

 when he found Melete. When Melete was proved 

 by Schubert's calculations to be a different body, 

 fresh search had to be made for Daphne ; but 

 she was not found till August 31, 1862, having 

 been thus lost more than six years. 



One feature of M. Goldschmidt's labors in this 

 field of research is worthy of mention. Most of 

 the astronomers who have added to the list of 

 known asteroids were professional observers, 

 employed in well-provided observatories. Gold- 

 schmidt was a painter by profession, and the 

 telescopes with which he observed were succes- 

 sively, as he could afford to extend his observa- 

 tional resources, of two inches', 2| inches', and 

 four inches' aperture only. " None of M. Gold- 

 schmidt's telescopes," says Mr. Main, of the Bad- 

 cliffe Observatory, " were mounted equatorially " 

 (that is, so as to follow any star to which they 

 might be directed by a single motion), " but in 

 the greater number of instances were pointed out 

 of a window which did not command the whole 

 of the sky." 



Having now nearly two hundred of these 

 bodies to deal with, we can form a safer opinion, 

 than in Olbers's time, of the theory whether they 

 are fragments of an exploded planet. The an- 

 swer to this question comes in no doubtful terms. 

 One fact alone suffices to show clearly that they 

 cannot have had a common origin. The least 



