THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 103 
scope reveals, the astronomer should find the unknown wanderer, that, 
afar on the verge of our solar system, obeyed the same laws which 
hold our earth within its annual path, and control the fulfilment 
for us of the divine promise that ‘‘ while the earth remaineth, seed 
time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and 
night shall not cease.” 
The perturbations of Uranus had long warned the astronomer of 
some unknown element preseut within the remote confines of the 
system; and more recently the distinguished French discoverer of 
Neptune had given expression to the belief that certain disturbances 
in the movements of the planet Mercury must be attributed, in all 
probability, to a similar cause: when the scientific world was startled 
by the announcement that, at the opposite extreme of our solar sys- 
tem, within the burning zone which intervenes between Mercury and 
the sun, the intra-mercurial planet Vulcan had been seen, revolving 
around the common solar centre within a period of nineteen days 
and seventeen hours, at a distance from the sun not exceeding 
eight degrees, and with a mass only one-seventeenth of that of Mer- 
cury. The glimmering twilight of Neptune, wandering in its remote 
orbit, the outer sentinel of our system, long withheld it even from 
the gaze of the astronomer; and we await the confirmation of this 
announcement of another planet, still longer hidden in the burning 
splendor of its orbit by excess of light. But if it should prove true, 
it will not diminish our interest in the result, that the discovery is 
due to the self-taught labors of M. Lescarbault, an humble amateur 
astronomer, working with rude instruments of his own construction. 
But from this I pass to other researches in Astronomical Science in 
which we may claim some personal interest. The year which has 
closed was specially marked to the Astronomer by a total eclipse of 
the sun, on the 18th of July, the line of central shadow of which 
extended from a point near Vancouver’s Island eastward to the 
Labrador Coast, and after traversing the Atlantic, passed across 
Spain and Northern Africa, terminating finally at the southern 
extremity of the Red Sea. On this continent, accordingly, an Astro- 
nomical expedition was organized by the accomplished superintendent 
of the U. S. Coast Survey, for the purpose of observing the eclipse at 
Cape Chudleigh, on the Coast of Labrador, and included in its staff, 
as a representative of Canadian Science, one of our own members, 
Lieut. E. D. Ashe, R.N., the director of the Quebec Observatory. 
