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No solar spot, no floating scoria, could maintain in its passage over the sun a circular and uniform shape, and we are confident that no other hypothesis but that of an intra-mercurial planet can explain the phenomena seen and measured by M. Lescarbault, a man of high character, possessing excellent instruments, and in every way competent to use them well, and to describe clearly and correctly the results of his observations.

It is, in the first place, clear from Lescarbault's account that Vulcan must have a considerable diameter certainly if Vulcan's diameter in miles were only half the diameter of Mercury, it would have been all but impossible for Lescarbault with his small telescope to see Vulcan at all, whereas he saw the black spot very distinctly.

If this one assertion be fabricated, the whole may be so. 'He considers these arguments to be strengthened, says the 'North British Review, 'by the assertion which, as we have seen, perplexed Leverrier himself, that if M. Lescarbault had actually seen a planet on the sun, he could not have kept it secret for nine months.

'With a grace and dignity full of kindness, says a contemporary narrative of these events, 'he congratulated Lescarbault on the important discovery which he had made. Anxious to obtain some mark of respect for the discoverer of Vulcan, Leverrier made inquiry concerning his private character, and learned from the village curé, the juge de paix, and other functionaries, that he was a skilful physician and a worthy man.

With such high recommendations, M. Leverrier requested from M. Rouland, the Minister of Public Instruction, the decoration of the Legion of Honour for M. Lescarbault. The Minister, in a brief but interesting statement of his claim, communicated this request to the Emperor, who, by a decree dated January 25, conferred upon the village astronomer the honours so justly due to him.

He said 'Lescarbault contradicts himself in having first asserted that he saw the planet enter upon the sun's disc, and having afterwards admitted to Leverrier that it had been on the disc some seconds before he saw it, and that he had merely inferred the time of its entry from the rate of its motion afterwards.

M. Liais, a French astronomer of considerable skill, formerly of the Paris Observatory, but at the time of Lescarbault's achievement in the service of the Brazilian Government, published a paper, 'Sur la Nouvelle Planète annoncée par M. Lescarbault, in which he endeavoured to establish the four following points: First, the observation of Lescarbault was never made.

Upon the heels of this forecast followed promptly a seeming verification. Dr. Lescarbault, a physician residing at Orgères, whose slender opportunities had not blunted his hopes of achievement, had, ever since 1845, when he witnessed a transit of Mercury, cherished the idea that an unknown planet might be caught thus projected on the solar background.

He forwarded the news of his observation to Europe. The astronomer Wolff, well known for his sun-spot studies, carefully calculated the interval which had passed since Lescarbault saw Vulcan on March 26, 1859, and to his intense satisfaction was enabled to announce that this interval contained the calculated period of the planet an exact number of times.

Many photographs of the sun also were taken during the hours when Vulcan, if he exists at all, might be expected to cross the sun's face. Nevertheless, I would not be understood to mean by the word 'fiction' aught savouring of fraud so far as Lescarbault is concerned I prefer the North Briton's view of Lescarbault's spot, that so to speak, it was