November 3, 1898] 



NA TURE 



With Mr. Landor's illustrations, two of which ac- 

 company this notice, we have no fault to find. The 

 photographs are excellent, and his own drawings are 

 powerfully descriptive of the impressions which re- 

 mained in his mind after his adventures were over. 

 The Kumaon hill track where he climbs round the face 

 of the cliff is indeed a perilous path ; but anything is 

 possible in a region where the habitations of the natives 

 can cling to the face of a wall in apparent defiance of all 

 laws of gravity, as they do in the illustration which faces 

 p. 159 of vol. ii. But with Mr. Landor's system of spell- 

 ing we cannot agree. It is not the "geographical" 

 system, and it is at first a little difficult to recognise well- 

 known Hindustani words in the guise in which Mr. 

 Landor clothes them. The words " Acha giao " (achcha 

 jao) would not in the mouth of a Pahari gypsy mean 

 " Go well " so much as "All right, clear out." 



And there is one other subject which we think requires 

 further investigation. The habits and manners of 

 Tibetans have often been described, sometimes by them- 

 selves, sometimes by scientific observers. But Tibetans 

 have never so far been classed amongst cannibals. The 

 revolting details which Mr. Landor gives of the practices 

 of the Lamas in connection with the last rites of a dead 

 Tibetan are too horrible to be admitted without question. 

 It should be remembered that Mr. Landor deals with a 

 section of the Tibetan community which is directly con- 

 nected with the great religious centres at Lhassa. It 

 happens that it is about these centres that we possess the 

 fullest information. No Lama in the neighbourhood of 

 Darjiling would admit for an instant that such practices 

 were common ; nor will the reports of educated native 

 travellers to Lhassa support the accusation. Mr. Landor 

 carries his search for sensation just a little too far when 

 he accepts in all good faith accusations such as this with- 

 out an appeal to the best authorities. 



With reference to the appendix to Mr. Landor's book, 

 and the report of Mr. Larkin, the Deputy Commissioner 

 of Almorah, the following extract from the Pioticcr Mail 

 of October 14 will be interesting. 



"We have the best authority for stating, as we did 

 the other day, that Mr. Landor was told that this report 

 was confidential, that no copy was given him, and that 

 he was not authorised to publish any Government 

 report." The certified copies of depositions made in 

 Mr. Larkin's Court should not be mistaken for Mr. 

 Larkin's report. T. H. H. 



BODE'S LA IV AND WITT'S PLANET D(2. 

 TN comparing the distances of the planets from the 

 ••• sun, it was early thought that there might be some 

 law which would connect these distances together and 

 allow us to calculate them correctly or even approxi- 

 mately. Kepler, as long ago as the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century, thought that he had discovered 

 such a law ; but as he could not account for the anom- 

 alous space between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, he 

 abandoned the idea " of reconciling the actual state of 

 the planetary system with any theory he could form 

 respecting it, and hazarded the assertion that a planet 

 really existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, 

 and that its smallness alone prevented it from being 

 visible to astronomers." In the year 1772 Prof. Bode 

 announced a law which gave a curious approximate 

 relation between these distances, although it seems 

 certain that Titius of Wittenberg discovered and formu- 

 lated it some years previously, pointing out "the 

 existence of a remarkable symmetry in the disposition 

 of the bodies constituting the solar system." This law 

 was very simple, and amounted to this : If to each of 

 the planets, beginning with the one nearest the sun, the 

 number 4 be given, and to the second, third, fourth, &c., 

 the numbers 3, 6, 12, &c., respectively, be added, then 

 NO. I 5 14, VOL. 59] 



the resulting numbers, divided by ten, approximately 

 give the values for the mean distances of each planet 

 from the sun in terms of the radius of the earth's orbit. 



The first six numbers calculated by this law gave with 

 fair accuracy the relative distances of the planets ; but 

 there was one exception, namely the number 2'S, which 

 represented the distance of a planet when there was no- 

 body known : this exception was the same that puzzled 

 Kepler in the formation of his law. Prof. Bode sup- 

 posed, however, a hypothetical planet to fill up this gap, 

 which probably was absent simply because it had not 

 then been discovered. We may mention that at that 

 time Uranus and Neptune had not been found, so that 

 the discrepancy with regard to the latter planet, in 

 which this law utterly breaks down, could not then have 

 been noticed. As this one feature in the law could not 

 otherwise be explained, namely the number which, 

 accounted for the distance of a planet between Mars 

 and Jupiter, a planet which had never been observed, 

 it was decided to make a thorough search and try to- 

 pick up this missing member. The discovery of Uranus 

 in I78i,and its distance agreeing with the value as given 

 by Bode's law, set many astronomers thinking, with the 

 result that it was decided to make a systematic search 

 in the heavens for this unknown planet. .Although all 

 those who undertook this search worked diligently to 

 pick up this supposed body, it was left for Piazzi, the 

 Sicilian astronomer at the observatory of the University 

 of Palermo, to make the discovery of the first (Ceres) of 

 those now numerous small bodies known as planetoids,, 

 asteroids, or minor planets, which make their journey 

 round the sun between Mars and Jupiter. 



Piazzi, it may be remarked, was at the time construct- 

 ing a star catalogue, and discovered this small body in 

 his usual course of work, thinking at first it was a new 

 kind of comet. 



This was the first of a series of discoveries which now 

 followed one another, and, up to the beginning of this, 

 year, no less than 425 of these planetoids have been dis- 

 covered. The question then was asked. Did Bode's law 

 still hold good ? Were these small bodies, which vary in 

 size from 100 to 10 miles in diameter, remnants of one 

 large planet which originally revolved between Jupiter 

 and Mars at a distance approximately the same as that 

 represented by Bode's number 2'8? 



Taking the distance of the mean minor planet, namely 

 2'650, and comparing it with the computed value from 

 Bode's law, namely 2'8, the agreement was found to be 

 sufficiently satisfactory for such an approximate law. In 

 the case of Saturn, the difference between the mean, 

 distance and that given by Bode's law is nearly three 

 times that for the minor planet above mentioned, so that 

 the law may be said to approximately hold good. 



In the case of Neptune, which w^as discovered in 1846,. 

 the value of the mean distance, according to Bode's law,. 

 is far from the true one, so that the law in this case may- 

 be said to completely break down. 



Quite recently another planet, not a member of the 

 minor planet family, as far as we know, but one revolving 

 by itself, in an orbit between Mars and the Earth, has 

 been added to the members of the solar system. Does 

 Bode's law account for this ? Before answering this 

 question, let us, first of all , confine our attention for a. 

 moment to the manner in which this body was discovered, 

 and what we as yet know about it. 



In the early days of minor planet discovery, the task 

 of finding one of these heavenly wanderers was by no 

 means a light one ; for the watcher had not only to be 

 provided with an excellent star map of the region of the 

 sky he was studying at the time (he nearly always con- 

 structed one himself), but to make measurements of each 

 of the bright points in his field of view, night after 

 night, to see if he could detect any relative motion be- 

 tween them. Considering the number of stars in the- 



