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Page 37
As to the origin of this seemingly fragmentary matter, we know
nothing, and conjectures are of little use in scientific exposition.
It may be true that a large planet once occupied the asteroidal space,
and that the same has been rent by some violence into thousands of
fragments. It may be observed that the period of rotation of the
inferior planets corresponds in general with that of our earth, while
the corresponding period of the superior or outside planets is less
than one-half as great. The forces which produced this difference in
the period of rotation may have contended for the mastery in that part
of our solar system where the asteroids are found; and the disruption
may have resulted from such conflict of forces.
Or again, it may be that a large planet is now in process of formation
in the asteroidal space. Possibly one of the greater fragments may
gain in mass by attracting to itself the nearer fragments, and thus
continue to wax until it shall have swept clean the whole pathway of
the planetary matter, except such small fragments as may after �ons of
time continue to fall upon the master body, as our meteorites now at
intervals rush into our atmosphere and sometimes reach the earth.
Some astronomers have given and are still giving their almost
undivided attention to asteroidal investigation. The discoveries have
been mostly made by a few principal explorers. The astronomer, Palisa,
from the observatory of Pola and that of Vienna, has found no fewer
than seventy-five of the whole group. The observer, Peters, at
Clinton, New York, has found forty-eight asteroids; Luther, of
D�sseldorf, twenty-four; Watson, of Ann Arbor, twenty-two; Borrelly,
of Marseilles, fifteen; Goldschmidt, of Paris, fourteen, and Charlois,
of Nice, fourteen. The English astronomers have found only a few.
Among such, Hind of London, who has-discovered ten asteroids, is the
leader.
The Italian, German and American astronomers are first in the interest
and success which they have shown in this branch of sky-lore. Their
investigations have made us acquainted with the dim group of little
worlds performing their unknown part in the vast space between the
Warrior planet and Jove.
THE STORY OF NEPTUNE.
The discovery of the planet Neptune by Dr. Galle on the twenty-third
of September, 1846, was one of the most important events in the
intellectual history of this century. Certainly it was no small thing
to find a new world. Discoverers on the surface of our globe are
immortalized by finding new lands in unknown regions. What, therefore,
should be the fame of him who finds a new world in the depths of
space? Perhaps the discoverer of an asteroid or planetary moon may
not claim, in the present advanced stage of human knowledge, to rank
among the flying evangels of history; but he who found the great
planet third in rank among the worlds of the solar system, a world
having a mass nearly seventeen times as great as that of our own, may
well be regarded as one of the immortals.
We have referred the discovery of Neptune to Dr. Johann Gottfried
Galle, the German astronomer and Professor of Natural Sciences at
Berlin. But this Dr. Galle was only the _eye_ with which the discovery
was made. He was a good eye; but the eye, however clear, is only an
organ of something greater than the eye, and that something in this
case consisted of two parts. The first part was Urbain Jean Joseph
Leverrier, the French astronomer, of the Paris Observatory. The other
part was Professor John Couch Adams, the astronomer of the University
at Cambridge, England. These two were the thinkers; that is, they
were, as it were, jointly the great mind of the age, of which Galle
was the eye.
In getting a clear notion of the discovery of Neptune, several other
personages are to be considered. One of these is the astronomer Alexis
Bouvart, of France, who was born in Haute Savoie, in 1767, and died
in June of 1843, three years before Neptune was found. Another
personage was his nephew, the astronomer E. Bouvart, and a third was
the noted Prussian, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, Director of the
Observatory at K�nigsberg, who was born in 1784, and died on the
seventeenth of March, 1846, only six months before the discovery of
our outer planet.
Still another character to be commemorated is the English astronomer
Professor James Challis, Plumian Professor and Director of the
Observatory at Cambridge, England. This contributor to the great event
was born in 1803, and died at Cambridge on the third of December,
1882. Still another, not to be disregarded, is Dr. T.J. Hussey, of
Hayes, England, whose mind seems to have been one of the first to
anticipate the existence of an ultra-Uranian planet. And still again,
the English astronomer royal, Sir G.B. Airy must be mentioned as a
contributor to the final result; but he is to be regarded rather as a
contributor by negation. The great actors in the thing done were
Leverrier, Adams and Galle. English authors contend strongly for
placing the names in this order: Adams, Leverrier and Galle.
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