204 REMARKS ON THE SMALL PLANETS. 



fact it is but necessary to cast an eye on the table of discoveries of 

 asteroids. We shall there see more than one fortunate night in 

 which science has been enriched with two of these minute bodies, 

 and privileged weeks which have given us four of them. The 5th 

 of October, 1855, for instance, M. Luther discovers Fides, and M. 

 Goldschmidt, Atalanta. Erato springs into light at Berlin, and Ti- 

 tania in the United States, the 14th of September, 1860. The nights 

 of the 9th and 12th had already been signalized by discoveries made 

 by MM. Goldschmidt and Chacornac. April 26, 1861, Hesperia 

 and Latona succeed one another at two hours' interval, and Sep- 

 tember 19, 1857, with a success unheard of in the annals of astron- 

 omy, M. Goldschmidt, for his own share, detects, very near one 

 another, the tioin planets Pales and Doris. Often the same planet, in 

 the same night or nights but little remote, has been perceived by two 

 and sometimes by three astronomers, observing from widely distant 

 stations. It is in this way that M. Gasparis might dispute Irene with 

 M. Hind, and Massilia with M. Chacornac. By a coincidence still 

 more surprising, the 1st of March, 1854, Amphitrite is simultane- 

 ously discovered by MM. Marth, Chacornac, and Pogson, while, on 

 his part, M. Luther discovers Bellona. There will be found in the 

 table concurrences not less extraordinary in connexion with the 

 names of Lutetia and Calliope, Themis and Phocoea, Pomona and 

 Polymnia, Isis and Daphne. To what cause are we to attribute facts 

 like these, too numerous to be fortuitous? Thus far, it must be 

 acknowledged, astronomers have given no satisfactory explanation. 

 By some it has been asked if we should not recognize herein an indi- 

 cation of cotemporaneous formations, and of condensation actually 

 taking place in the cosmic ring which gravitates between Mars and 

 Jupiter, and if this idea does not find its confirmation in the mysteri- 

 ous changes of the rings of Saturn, recently signalized by MM. 

 Bond and Lassell; but this hypothesis appears to us rash, and, on the 

 whole, unphilosophical. 



V. 



The observation of the small planets is so difficult, and the discov- 

 eries are almost all so recent, that the notions which astronomy has 

 gained with respect to each of these bodies in particular are still very 

 small, there being several whose elements are determined with so 

 little certainty and precision that the differences between one table 

 and another extend, not merely to seconds, but to minutes and some- 

 times to degrees. We might cite a planet, Daphne, for instance, 

 whose orbit is so little known, that for four years, notwithstanding as- 

 siduous research, astronomers have not been able to rediscover it. 

 Nevertheless, the results obtained up to this time, incomplete as they 

 are, suffice to enable us to group the asteroids according to the anal- 

 ogies and differences which they present, to study them collectively 

 and in their mutual relations. This study is founded, in great part, 

 on the analysis of the numerical tables which will be found at the end 

 of the present notice. 



Humboldt has classified the planets, after certain natural charac- 



