ced that a
considerable portion of the discrepancy between Mercury's observed and
calculated motions has long since been accounted for by the changed
estimate of the earth's mass as compared with the sun's, resulting from
the new determination of the sun's distance. However, the arguments
depending on this consideration would not be suited to these pages.

There was one feature in Liais's paper which was a little unfortunate.
He questioned Lescarbault's honesty. 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.
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.'

This charge of dishonesty, unfortunate in itself, had the unfortunate
effect of preventing Lescarbault or the Abbe Moigno from replying. The
latter simply remarked that the accusation was of such a nature as to
dispense him from any obligation to refute it. This was an error of
judgment, I cannot but think, if an effective reply was really
available.

The Remarks with which the North British Reviewer closes his account may
be repeated now, so far as they relate to the force of the negative
evidence, with tenfold effect. 'Since the first notice of the discovery
in the beginning of January 1860 the sun has been anxiously observed by
astronomers; and the limited area around him in which the planet _must
be_, if he is not upon the sun, has doubtless been explored with equal
care by telescopes of high power, and processes by which the sun's
direct light has been excluded from the tube of the telescope as well as
the eye of the observer, and yet no planet has been found. This fact
would entitle us to conclude that no such planet exists if its existence
had been merely conjectured, or if it had been deduced from any of the
laws of planetary distance, or even if Leverrier or Adams had announced
it as the probable result of planetary perturbations. If the finest
telescopes cannot rediscover a planet which with the small power used by
Lesc