392 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE URANOLOGICAL 



and tried to determine the great inclination of the supposed 

 ringr to the ecliptic ; but in the case of Neptune, as long 

 before in that of Uranus, subsequent examination has dis- 

 pelled the belief in the existence of a ring. 



I think it right to forbear, in this work, from more than 

 an allusion to the certainly earlier but unpublished labours, 

 not therefore crowned by recognised success, of the highly 

 distinguished and acute English geometrician, John Couch 

 Adams, of St. John's College, Cambridge. The historical 

 facts relating to these labours, and to Le Terrier's and Galle's 

 happy discovery of the new planet, are related circumstan- 

 tially, impartially, and from well-assured sources of autho- 

 rity, in two memoirs, by the Astronomer-Royal Airy, and 

 by Bernhard von Lindenau ( 64 ). Intellectual labours di- 

 rected almost at the same time to the same great object, 

 offer, besides the spectacle of a competition honourable to 

 both competitors, an interest the more vivid, because the 

 selection of the processes employed testifies the brilliant state 

 of the higher mathematical knowledge at the present epoch. 



Satellites o f Neptune. 



If, in the outer planets, the existence of a ring has as yet 

 presented itself to our view in one instance only, and if the 

 rarity of this phenomenon causes us therefore to conjecture 

 that the formation of a detached belt of matter is dependent 

 on the concurrence of peculiar conditions difficult of fulfil- 

 ment; on the other hand, the existence of satellites, 

 accompanying the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and 

 Uranus, appears to be a far more general phenomenon. 

 So early as the beginning of August, 1847, Lassell reoog- 



