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The same decade of which I speak was marked by the beginning of Professor Pierce's mathematical work, especially his determination of the perturbations of Uranus and Neptune. At this time commenced the work of Dr. B. A. Gould, who soon became the leading figure in American astronomy.
Since in every other case the satellites of a planet are situated nearly in the plane of the planet's equator, it may be assumed that the same rule holds with Uranus and Neptune; and, that being so, we must conclude that those planets rotate backward on their axes.
Later astronomers have even succeeded with the inverse problem, that is, knowing the perturbations or disturbances, to find the place and the mass of the disturbing body. Thus, from the deviations of Uranus from his theoretical position, the discovery of Neptune was accomplished.
The immense distance of Uranus, its small angular diameter, the feebleness of its light, did not allow the hope, that if that body had satellites, the magnitudes of which were, relatively to its own size, what the satellites of Jupiter, of Saturn are, compared to those two large planets, any observer could perceive them, from the earth.
I have said nothing adequate about the railway system, or the electric telegraph, nor about the calculus, or lithography, the airpump, or the voltaic battery; the discovery of Uranus or Neptune, and more than a hundred asteroids; the relation of meteoric streams to comets; nothing of the expeditions by land and sea that have been sent forth by various governments for the determination of important astronomical or geographical questions; nothing of the costly and accurate experiments they have caused to be made for the ascertainment of fundamental physical data.
He lifts the hood, and behold the crown. He raises the crutch, and lo! the rod of power. He drops the scythe of death for the jewel of eternal life. "Om Mani Padme Um." O child of Adam! Meditate on the transmutations of life. Behold the earthly miracle of the caterpillar and the butterfly, of the toiling mortal and the transcendent God! Uranus
Further and further we go, and the planets behind us are disappearing, and even the Sun is dwindling down to a mere speck; still we hurry on, and at last alight on another planet, Uranus, about sixty times larger than our Earth; we see moons in attendance, but they have scarcely any light to reflect; the Sun is only a star now; but we must hasten on deeper and deeper into space.
In other words, if the theoretical and the real Uranus had been placed side by side in the sky, they would have seemed, to the sharpest eye, to form a single body. The idea that these enigmatical disturbances were due to the attraction of an unknown exterior body was a tolerably obvious one; and we accordingly find it suggested in many different quarters.
To this day she is a pagan, emulating in this the example of the noblest of the sciences, Astronomy, who bears in mind the great insults she has received from the Church, and tolerates the name of no saint in the visible heavens; the new worlds she discovers are dedicated to Uranus, or Neptune, or other Olympian divinities.
We immediately replied by beginning the construction of a square, and before this was finished both planets began to answer, one with the triangle and the other with the crescent. The latter was made by Uranus, and as soon as it was finished the triangle began to appear beside it, showing to us that Uranus was reading from Saturn also.
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