Nebular Theory.— Mistocklcs. 363 
diameter, varies over 26 million miles in its distance from the 
Sun. 
We find that the same rule a])j)lies to the more distant 
planets. Saturn, havinq- a distance of 867 million miles from 
the Sun and a diameter of 76.000 miles, varies in its distance 
about 100 million miles. Uranus, with a distance of 1.765 
million miles antl a diameter of 32,000 miles, varies 176 mil- 
lion miles in its distance. Finally we come to Neptune, which 
seems to make an exception. His averag^e distance from the 
Sun is figured to be 2.764 million miles and his diameter is 
calculated to be 37.000 miles, while the variation in his dis- 
tance is accepted to be the san''^; as that of Jupiter, that is, 
about 50 million miles. P.ut ti.e astronomical calculations 
may easily be erroneous in this case. I am confident that the 
variation in Xeptune's distance amounts to about 200 million 
miles. I shall produce proofs later, which will make the mat- 
ter clear and show my opinion to be correct. In the mean- 
while it is important to take notice of the calculations of 
Adams and Leverier concerning the perturbations of Uranus. 
Both of them ascribe great excentricity to the disturbing ])lanet, 
Neptune, and there is reason to believe that the excentricity, 
which was found as a result of these men's calculations, which 
also led to the discovery of Neptune, is more correct than the 
one accepted by modern astronomers and based on the third 
of the so-called Kepler's laws. We must remember, that tlie 
reasonable correctness of this law for the inner part of the 
solar system does not guarantee its correctness in an unlimited 
application, for which reason it may not hold good as to the 
most distant planet and cannot be safely applied unless we 
have other things to go by. Bode's law held good for all the 
planets until it was applied to Neptune when it proved to be 
not even approximately correct. But these matters we shall, 
as before said, take up and discuss later on. Let us. how- 
ever, in connection with these remarks direct our attention to 
the fact that to the present time there have been discovered 
about 500 small planets between Mars and Jupiter, which 
have a variation in their distance of from 100 to 200 million 
miles, which shows that the excentricity of the planetary orbits 
everywhere stands in relation to the size of the respective plan- 
ets and their distances from the Sun. We may, therefore, con- 
