to study Hell's manuscript.

At first the task of discovering anything which would lead to a
positive decision on one side or the other seemed hopeless. To a
cursory glance, the descriptions given by Littrow seemed to cover the
ground so completely that no future student could turn his doubt into
certainty. But when one looks leisurely at an interesting object,
day after day, he continually sees more and more. Thus it was in
the present case. One of the first things to strike me as curious
was that many of the alleged alterations had been made before the
ink got dry. When the writer made a mistake, he had rubbed it out
with his finger, and made a new entry.

The all-important point was a certain suspicious record which Littrow
affirmed had been scraped out so that the new insertion could
be made. As I studied these doubtful figures, day by day, light
continually increased. Evidently the heavily written figures, which
were legible, had been written over some other figures which were
concealed beneath them, and were, of course, completely illegible,
though portions of them protruded here and there outside of the
heavy figures. Then I began to doubt whether the paper had been
scraped at all. To settle the question, I found a darkened room,
into which the sun's rays could be admitted through an opening in the
shutter, and held the paper in the sunlight in such a way that the
only light which fell on it barely grazed the surface of the paper.
Examining the sheet with a magnifying glass, I was able to see the
original texture of the surface with all its hills and hollows.
A single glance sufficed to show conclusively that no eraser had
ever passed over the surface, which had remained untouched.

The true state of the case seemed to me almost beyond doubt.
It frequently happened that the ink did not run freely from the
pen, so that the words had sometimes to be written over again.
When Hell first wrote down the little figures on which, as he
might well suppose, future generations would have to base a very
important astronomical element, he saw that they were not written
with a distinctness corresponding to their importance. So he wrote
them over again with the hand, and in the spirit of a man who was
determined to leave no doubt on the subject, little weening that
the act would give rise to a doubt which would endure for a century.

This, although the most important case of supposed alteration, was by
no means