Address of the President of the British Association. 241 



but that others might also remain to reward the patient labors of other 

 observers. He therefore distrusted his own eyes ; and preferred to 

 believe that he had been mistaken, rather than that the existence and 

 force of a new planet had been reserved for the discovery of this lat- 

 ter age. What his eyes saw, but what his judgment failed to discrim- 

 inate and apply, has since become a recognized fact in science. 



" I will not presume to measure the claims of the two illustrious names 

 of Leverrier and Adams ; of him, who, in midnight workings and 

 watchings, discovered the truth in our own country, and of the hardly 

 happier philosopher who was permitted and enabled to be the first, 

 after equal workings and watchings, to proclaim the great reality which 

 his science had prepared, and assured him to expect. I will trust my- 

 self with only two observations : the one, my earnest hope that the 

 rivalry not merely of the illustrious Leverrier and of my illustrious 

 countryman, Adams, but of the two great nations which they represent, 

 France and England, respectively, may always be confined to pursuits 

 in which victory is without woe, and to studies which enlarge and ele- 

 vate the mind, and which, if rightly directed, may produce alike glory 

 to God and good to mankind : and the other, my equal hope, that for 

 those (some of whom I trust may now hear me) who employ the same 

 scientific training and the same laborious industry which have marked 

 the researches of Leverrier and Adams, there may still remain similar 

 triumphs in the yet unpenetrated regions of space ; and that — unlike 

 the greater son of a great father — they may not have to mourn that 

 there are no more worlds to be conquered. 



"It is a remarkable fact, that the seeing of the planet Neptune was 

 effected as suddenly at Berlin by means of one of the star-maps which 

 has proceeded from an association of astronomers chiefly Germans ; 

 s »ch maps forming in themselves a sufficient illustration of the value 

 °f such Associations as our own, by which the labor and the expense 

 t°o great, perhaps, for any one individual— are supplied by the com- 

 bed exertions of many kindred followers of science. 

 . "It is another result of the circulation of these star-maps, that a new 

 J ls *tor, a comet, can hardly be within the range of a telescope for a 

 J J* hours, without his presence being discovered and announced 

 through Europe. Those comets which have been of larger apparent 

 tensions, or which have continued longer within view, have, in con- 

 sequence, for more than two thousand years been observed with more 

 0r 'ess accuracy ; their orbits have been calculated ; and the return of 

 ^e has been determined with a precision which in past ages exer- 

 Cls *i the wonder of nations ;— but now, improved maps of the heavens, 

 and improved instruments, by which the strangers who pass along 

 th °se heavens are observed, carry knowledge where conjecture lately 

 2 ared not to penetrate. It is not that more comets exist, as has some- 

 ln ?. es 4 keen said, but more are observed. 



f An Englishman— a subject of this United Kingdom— cannot refer 

 *° ^e enlarged means of astronomical observation enjoyed by the pres- 

 age* vvithout some allusion to the noble Earl, Lord Rosse, one of 

 J e Vice Presidents of this day, who, himself educated amongst us here 

 J Oxford, has devoted large means and untiring labor to the comp le- 

 UOn of the most wonderful telescope which science, art, and wealth 



S * c °*d Se RIES? Vol. IV, No. 1 1— Sept., 1847. 31 



