598 



Dr. H. Wilde on a new Binat 



l V 



progression of the planetary distances known as Bode's 

 law, which, as Airy and Herschel have rightly said, " is not 

 founded upon any theory which connects it either with 

 Kepler's laws, the gravitating force, or any other known 

 physical law." 



5. Notwithstanding the brilliant results which followed 

 the adoption of Bode's law by independent thinkers, in the 

 discoveries of the minor planets and of Neptune, the complete 

 isolation of the law from all physical causes (which admits 

 only of a teleological interpretation), appears to have created 

 a strong prejudice, amounting to hostility, in the minds of 

 eminent astronomical writers to disparage and obscure what 



Keptun« 



Diagrammatic Representation of the Contraction of the 

 Radius Vector of Neptune. 



they have been pleased to term Bode's "supposed" or "so 

 called " law of planetary distances, ostensibly on account of 

 minor differences from the observations, and its discordance 

 with the distance of Neptune. So accustomed have these 

 writers been to viewing the more exact relations of Kepler's 

 laws with the law of gravitation, and the extreme refinements 

 involved in the measurement of these relations, that their 

 power of forming a just estimate of probabilities becomes 



