of the celestial element.
But it was primarily selected to do justice to an English astronomer,
Adams, who had simultaneously made the same calculations as Le Verrier,
and obtained the same results--without publishing them. His work
remained in the records of the Greenwich Observatory.

The English command the seas, and wherever they dip their finger into
the water and find it salt, they feel themselves "at home," and know
that "Neptune's trident is the scepter of the world," hence this
complimentary nomenclature.

Neptune is separated by a distance of four milliards, four hundred
million kilometers from the solar center.

At such a distance, thirty times greater than that which exists between
the Sun and our world, Neptune receives nine hundred times less light
and heat than ourselves; _i.e._, Spitzbergen and the polar regions of
our globe are furnaces compared with what must be the Neptunian
temperature. Absolutely invisible to the unaided eye, this world
presents in the telescope the aspect of a star of the eighth magnitude.
With powerful magnifications it is possible to measure its disk, which
appears to be slightly tinged with blue. Its diameter is four times
larger than our own, and measures about 48,000 kilometers (29,900
miles), its surface is sixteen times vaster than that of the Earth, and
to attain its volume we should have to put together fifty-five globes
similar to our own. Weight at its surface must be about the same as
here, but its medium density is only 1/3 that of the Earth.

It gravitates slowly, dragging itself along an orbit thirty times vaster
than that of our globe, and its revolution takes 164 years, 281 days,
_i.e._, 164 years, 9 months. A single year of Neptune thus covers
several generations of terrestrial life. Existence must, indeed, be
strange in that tortoise-footed world!

While in their rotation period, Mercury accomplishes 47 kilometers
(29-3/8 miles) per second, and the Earth 29-1/2 (18-1/8 miles), Neptune
rolls along his immense orbit at a rate of only 5-1/2 kilometers (about
3-1/4 miles) per second.

The vast distance that separates us prevents our distinguishing any
details of his surface, but spectral analysis reveals the presence of an
absorbent atmosphere in which are gases unknown to the air of our
planet, and of which the chemical composition resembles that of the
atmosphere of Uranus.

One satellite has been discovered for Neptune. It has a considerable
inclination,