ormal record than it would be proper to give here. My
immediate object is to show, while the attention of the scientific public
is more particularly directed to the subject, that, with respect to this
remarkable discovery, English astronomers may lay claim to some merit.

"Mr. Adams formed the resolution of trying, by calculation, to account for
the anomalies in the motion of Uranus on the hypothesis of a more distant
planet, when he was an undergraduate in this university, and when his
exertions for the academical distinction, which he obtained in January
1843, left him no time for pursuing the research. In the course of that
year, he arrived at an approximation to the position of the supposed
planet; which, however, he did not consider to be worthy of confidence, on
account of his not {388} having employed a sufficient number of
observations of Uranus. Accordingly, he requested my intervention to obtain
for him the early Greenwich observations, then in course of
reduction;--which the Astronomer Royal immediately supplied, in the kindest
possible manner. This was in February, 1844. In September, 1845, Mr. Adams
communicated to me values which he had obtained for the heliocentric
longitude, excentricity of orbit, longitude of perihelion, and mass, of an
assumed exterior planet,--deduced entirely from unaccounted-for
perturbations of Uranus. The same results, somewhat corrected, he
communicated, in October, to the Astronomer Royal. M. Le Verrier, in an
investigation which was published in June of 1846, assigned very nearly the
same heliocentric longitude for the probable position of the planet as Mr.
Adams had arrived at, but gave no results respecting its mass and the form
of its orbit. The coincidence as to position from two entirely independent
investigations naturally inspired confidence; and the Astronomer Royal
shortly after suggested the employing of the Northumberland telescope of
this observatory in a systematic search after the hypothetical planet;
recommending, at the same time, a definite plan of operations. I undertook
to make the search,--and commenced observing on July 29. The observations
were directed, in the first instance, to the part of the heavens which
theory had pointed out as the most probable place of the planet; in
selecting which I was guided by a paper drawn up for me by Mr. Adams. Not
having hour xxi. of the Berlin star-maps--of the publication of which I was
not aware--I had to proceed on the