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“For example: the return of the comet predicted by Professor Eucke a great many times in succession, and the general good agreement of its calculated with its observed place during any one of its periods of visibility, would lead us to say that its gravitation toward the sun and planets is the sole and sufficient cause of all the phenomena of its orbitual motion; but when the effect of this cause is strictly calculated and subducted from the observed motion, there is found to remain behind a residual phenomenon, which would never have been otherwise ascertained to exist, which is a small anticipation of the time of its re-appearance, or a diminution of its periodic time, which can not be accounted for by gravity, and whose cause is therefore to be inquired into.
A change in the time of her diurnal rotation, as affecting the length of the day and night, must at once be followed by a corresponding modification of the periodicities of the nervous system of animals; a change in her orbitual translation round the sun, as determining the duration of the year, would, in like manner, give rise to a marked effect.
If its mass had been of equal amount with the earth's mass, its attraction would have influenced the earth's movement in a like degree in return, and the earth would have been so held back in its orbitual progress in consequence, that the year would have been lengthened to the extent of three hours.
In the pendulum, the earth's gravitation acting alone as an enumerator of passing moments; for the momentum conferred by motion is after all but a secondary result, an offspring of the earth's attraction. In the steady oscillations of this little instrument no less a power is concerned than that grand elementary force of nature, that is able to uphold the orbitual movements of massive worlds.
“For example: the return of the comet predicted by Professor Encke, a great many times in succession, and the general good agreement of its calculated with its observed place during any one of its periods of visibility, would lead us to say that its gravitation towards the sun and planets is the sole and sufficient cause of all the phenomena of its orbitual motion: but when the effect of this cause is strictly calculated and subducted from the observed motion, there is found to remain behind a residual phenomenon, which would never have been otherwise ascertained to exist, which is a small anticipation of the time of its reappearance, or a diminution of its periodic time, which cannot be accounted for by gravity, and whose cause is therefore to be inquired into.
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