ll 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. Leverrier at Paris received the announcement
still more joyfully; while the Abbe Moigno, who gave Vulcan its name,
and has always staunchly believed in the planet's existence,
congratulated Lescarbault warmly upon this new view of the shamefaced
Vulcan. Not one of those who already believed in the planet had the
least doubt as to the reality of Weber's observations, and of these only
Lescarbault himself received the news without pleasure. He, it seems,
has never forgiven the Germans for destroying his observatory and
library during the invasion of France in 1870, and apparently would
prefer that his planet should never be seen again rather than that a
German astronomer should have seen it. But the joy of the rest and
Lescarbault's sorrow were alike premature. It was found that the spot
seen by Weber had not only been observed at the Madrid observatory,
where careful watch is kept upon the sun, but had been photographed at
Greenwich; and when the description of its appearance, as seen in a
powerful telescope at one station, and its picture as photographed by a
fine telescope at the other, came to be examined, it was proved
unmistakably that the spot was an ordinary sun-spot (not even quite
round), which had after a few hours disappeared, as even larger
sun-spots have been known to do in even a shorter time.

It is clear that had not Weber's spot been fortunately seen at Madrid
and photographed at Greenwich, his observation would have been added to
the list of recorded apparitions of Vulcan in transit, for it fitted in
perfectly with the theory of Vulcan's real existence. I think, indeed,
for my own part, that the good fortune was Weber's. Had it so chanced
that thick weather in Madrid and at Greenwich had destroyed the evidence
actually obtained to show that what Weber described he really saw,
although it was not what he thought, some of the more suspicious would
have questioned whether, in the euphonious language of the North British
Reviewer, 'the round spot on the sun' was not due 'to one of those
illusions of the eye or of the brain which have sometimes disturbed the
tranquillity of science.' Of course no one acquainted with M. Weber's
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