SIDEREAL ASTRONOMY. 351 



We ourselves admit fully the difficulty of the case ; but we 

 are very solicitous that Mr. Adams's merits in the discovery 

 should not, from any accidents as to time or public com- 

 munication, be underrated either by the present generation or 

 by posterity; recollecting especially the circumstance, un- 

 noticed by Baron Humboldt, that the planet was first seen 

 (though not at the time recognised as such) through a tele- 

 scope directed by Mr. Adams's suggestion to that point in 

 the heavens, which his calculations indicated as the place of 

 the disturbing body.* 



We do not find in Humboldt's account of this wonderful 

 discovery any notice of the singular differences between the 

 assumed elements of the orbit of Neptune, on which Leverrier 

 and Adams founded their successful calculations as to its 

 place; and the actual elements as derived from present 

 observation, and from comparison with its former position, 

 when seen, without recognition of its planetary character, by 

 Lalande fifty-eight years ago. The detection of these dis- 

 cordances is mainly due to the American astronomers, Walker 

 and Pierce ; and they have led the latter to affirm that the 

 planet Neptune cannot really be that indicated by the calcu- 

 lations of Leverrier and Adams ! a conclusion much too 

 strange and startling to admit of easy acquiescence. Sir J. 

 Herschel, in his ( Outlines of Astronomy,' has happily eluci- 

 dated the difficulty, and explained the error of this conclusion, 

 by showing that the exact accuracy of the' assumed or pre- 

 dicted elements was by no means necessary to the successful 

 calculation of the place of the planet. Some points still 

 remain open for solution ; but they are such as future obser- 

 vations cannot fail to determine ; and meanwhile all that is 



* Without wishing to raise any question of relative merits, M. Leverrier' s 

 high reputation will admit of our stating, that the value which Mr. Adams 

 affixed to the limits of the inferior axis of the presumed planet was considerably 

 nearer the reality than that assigned by his competitor in this remarkable 

 discovery. 



