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the possibility of a dark planet incapable of reflecting light, it has hither o 
been held by natural philosophers, without exception, that one discordant 
fact from observed phenomena, not mathematically accounted for, would be 
sufficient to upset the Newtonian law of gravitation, although it seemed 
before to afford a solution for such complex motions of planets and satellites, 
and so many phenomena of nature as it is supposed to do. _ Clairvaux was 
about to express his opinion that the law of gravitation faffed, because he 
found a discrepancy of a small fraction between the moon’s observed place 
and that calculated according to the theory of Newton. Here I cannot he p 
expressing my opinion that our Honorary Secretary has had hard measure 
dealt out to him, because he has ventured to express his scepticism as o e 
law of gravitation. He has not expressed his scepticism without giving 
sound and good reasons for it. Why am I to be so little indulgent to heresy, 
if it be heresy, in matters of science, when I am called upon to e so c lari 
table to any amount of heterodoxy in religion ? That while the Bible may be 
called in question by any man, and disregarded as the revelation 0 0 ® 
will ; while it may be treated as a collection of fables ; while i s c eares 
expressions maybe regarded as mere apocalyptic visions , I do not see , 
when all this is allowed with so much cold indifference, a man is 0 e 
branded as a philosophical heretic because he cannot accept as soun every 
demonstration of Newton’s Principw, or Laplace’s Mechanism of t e eavens. 
Mr. Reddie gave good reasons, I say, for his scepticism the other evening, 
but some gentlemen who were present seemed to think X neg ec e my c u y 
in not calling him to order for wandering from the subject of discussion, 
reference to the law of gravitation was a part of the discussion, and Mr. 
Reddie, I conceive, was quite within the proper limits of the discussion, in 
maintaining that the law of gravitation was not so mcontrovertibly prove 
as it had been assumed to be. What is the state of the case ? The dis- 
covery of Neptune in the very place in the heavens where the observed per- 
turbations of Uranus, pointed out by exact calculation on t e ew on .an 
hypothesis that such a planet should exist, such discovery being “° casua 
one, but following directly from the calculations, has been trumpeted forth 
by scientific men as one of the greatest triumphs of modem phdosophy. 
Now Mr. Reddie calls in question the accuracy of the statements made in 
all the more modern text-books of astronomy on this subject. He has a per- 
fect right to do so, if he can produce proper evidence. He asserts that e 
two calculations made by Adams and Le Verrier of the position of the plane 
causing the perturbations of Uranus, did not by any means agree ; that they 
did not by any means arrive at the same position of the planet ; and that t 
discrepancies in the calculated elements of that planet were considerable ; 
that the planet Neptune, when found, was not in the place assigned to it by 
either Adams or Le Verrier ; and, finally, that the elements of the orbit o 
Neptune, as determined from observation, differ so considerably from those 
calculated by Adams and Le Verrier, that they cannot be made to agree 
with either. I maintain, therefore, that our Honorary Secretary is , perfectly 
philosophical in urging these facts against this argument for the Newtonian 
