444 



COSMOS. 



What is called the law of Wurm of Lconberg, and some- 

 times distinguished from the law of Titius and Bode, is 

 merely a correction which Wurm made as to the distance of 

 Mercury from the Sun, and the difference between the dis- 

 tances of Mercury and Venus. Approximating nearer to the 

 fact, he fixes the former as 387, the latter 680, and the dis- 

 tance of the Earth IjOOO. 33 Gauss had already, on the occa- 



33 Wurm, in Bode's Astron. Jahrbuch for the year 1790, 

 p. 168; and Bode, Von clem neuen ztvischen Mars und Jupiter 

 entdeckten achten Hauptplaneten des Sonnensy stems, 1802, 

 p. 45. With the numerical correction of Wurm, the series, 

 according to the distances from the Sun, is : 



Mercury 



Venus 



Earth 



Mars 



Small planets ... 



Jupiter 



Saturn 



Uranus 



Neptune 387+ 128*293 = 37891 



In order that the degree of accuracy of these results may 

 be tested, the actual mean distances of the planets are given 

 in the next table as they are acknowledged at the present 

 time, with the addition of the numbers which Kepler consi- 

 dered in accordance with the Tychonic system to be the true 

 ones. I quote the latter from Newton's work De Mundi Sys- 

 temate (Opuscula math, philos. etphilol. 1744, torn. ii. p. 22): 



