of Edinburgh , Session 1877-78. 
495 
world, by another corps of practical scientists newly incorporated 
into the establishment. Then came the rise of the “ Association 
Scientifique de France,” a voluntary popular institution after the 
British model, but where all the sciences were taken up, and Le 
Yerrier was President of everything. 
He took care verbally and with semi-military hauteur , to appoint 
his Observatory subalterns their tasks to perform ; but when these 
were performed, largely by the native and peculiar, and often most 
exalted, skill of the workers, they were pushed into obscurity on 
every great occasion, and Le Verrier took sole ostensible authorship 
of all their doings. Long had they borne, but how much longer were 
they to continue to bear, this peculiarly affronting tyranny? To 
perform the most exquisite work in their own lines, but to remain 
unknown, trodden on, and see another, who in his heart despised 
such things, gain all the advantage and all the credit? Feelings, 
though silent, were growing more bitter and dangerously exasperated 
day by day at the Observatoire. Something must come of it. At 
length, not there, but at the Academy, the malcontents found a 
leader in M. Delaunay : a younger man, but rising to be a still 
greater mathematician in gravitational astronomy, than Le Yerrier 
himself : and yet at the same time, was this most unique and 
estimable Delaunay as much distinguished by natural amiability, 
by the sympathetic tendencies of his disposition, and his earnest 
regard for others, as the Director of the Observatoire, Imperial Lord 
of the Ascendant, was daily becoming more and more antipathic, 
as well as impatient of every one in the world but himself. 
Now Delaunay’s grand mathematically scientific work at that 
period was the theory of the Moon ; and he too had come therein 
on certain equations whence he drew a new value for the Solar 
parallax ; making it however more nearly 8 , 85 // , and proving 
Le Yerrier’s 8' 95" quite inadmissible. So thereupon the two great 
mathematicians crossed swords. Their discussions, meeting after 
meeting of the Academy, attained a vigour and an intensity which 
drew half Paris to assist at these re-unions ; but chiefly to hear Le 
Yerrier ! He was indeed rather in the wrong scientifically ; and 
had, long afterwards, to modify his 8*95" to something very close to 
Delaunay’s numbers. But what did the crowd care for minute 
exactitudes ! They went to see how a hero fights, how he gains his 
3 u 
VOL. IX. 
