t
discovery; but in the forty years which have elapsed since these
memorable researches the question has gradually become settled. It is
the impartial verdict of the scientific world outside England and
France, that the merits of this splendid triumph of science must be
divided equally between the late distinguished Professor J.C. Adams, of
Cambridge, and the late U.J.J. Le Verrier, the director of the Paris
Observatory.

Shortly after Mr. Adams had taken his degree at Cambridge, in 1843, when
he obtained the distinction of Senior Wrangler, he turned his attention
to the perturbations of Uranus, and, guided by these perturbations
alone, commenced his search for the unknown planet. Long and arduous was
the enquiry--demanding an enormous amount of numerical calculation, as
well as consummate mathematical resource; but gradually Mr. Adams
overcame the difficulties. As the subject unfolded itself, he saw how
the perturbations of Uranus could be fully explained by the existence of
an exterior planet, and at length he had ascertained, not alone the
orbit of this outer body, but he was even able to indicate the part of
the heavens in which the unknown globe must be sought. With his
researches in this advanced condition, Mr. Adams called on the
Astronomer-Royal, Sir George Airy, at Greenwich, in October, 1845, and
placed in his hands the computations which indicated with marvellous
accuracy the place of the yet unobserved planet. It thus appears that
seven months before anyone else had solved this problem Mr. Adams had
conquered its difficulties, and had actually located the planet in a
position but little more than a degree distant from the spot which it is
now known to have occupied. All that was wanted to complete the
discovery, and to gain for Professor Adams and for English science the
undivided glory of this achievement, was a strict telescopic search
through the heavens in the neighbourhood indicated.

Why, it may be said, was not such an enquiry instituted at once? No
doubt this would have been done, if the observatories had been generally
furnished forty years ago with those elaborate star-charts which they
now possess. In the absence of a chart (and none had yet been published
of the part of the sky where the unknown planet was) the search for the
planet was a most tedious undertaking. It had been suggested that the
new globe could be detected by its visible disc; but it must be
remembered that even Uranus, so much