NEW PLANETS NEAR THE SUN. 41 



written on a piece of laudanum-stained paper which at the 

 moment was doing service as a marker in the Connaissance des 

 Temps. Leverrier asked Lescarbault what distance he had 

 deduced for the new planet. The doctor replied that he 

 had been unable to deduce any, not being a mathematician : 

 he had made many attempts, however. 1 Hearing this, 

 Leverrier asked for the rough draft of these ineffective 

 calculations. * My rough draft ? ' said the doctor. ' Paper 

 is rather scarce with us here. I am a joiner as well as an 

 astronomer ' (we can imagine the expression of Leverrier's 

 face at this moment) ; ' I calculate in my workshop, and I 

 write upon the boards ; and when I wish to use them in new 

 calculations, I remove the old ones by planing/ On adjourn- 

 ing to the carpenter's shop, however, they found the board 

 with its lines and its numbers in chalk still unobliterated. 



This last piece of evidence, though convincing Leverrier 

 that Lescarbault was no mathematician, and therefore 

 probably in his eyes no astronomer, yet satisfied him as to 

 the good faith of the doctor of Orgeres. With a grace 

 and dignity full of kindness, which must have afforded a 

 singular contrast to his previous manner, he congratulated 

 Lescarbault on his important discovery. He made some 

 inquiry also at Orgeres, concerning the private character 

 of Lescarbault, and learning from the village curb, the jug& 

 de paix, and other functionaries, that he was a skilful phy- 

 sician, he determined to secure some reward for his labours. 

 At Leverrier's request M. Rouland, the Minister of Public 

 Instruction, communicated to Napoleon III. the result of 

 Leverrier's visit, and on January 25 the Emperor bestowed on 

 the village doctor the decoration of the Legion of Honour, 



To return to astronomical facts. 



It appears from Lescarbault's observation, that on March 



1 The problem is in reality, at least in the form in which Lescar- 

 bault attacked it, an exceedingly simple one. A solution of the 

 general problem is given at p. 181 of my treatise on the Geometry of 

 Cycloids. It is, in fact, almost identical with the problem of determining 

 the distance of a planet from observations made during a single night. 



