edents would imagine for a moment that he had invented the
observation, even though the objective reality of his spot had not been
established. But if a person who is entirely unknown, states that he has
seen Vulcan, there is antecedently some degree of probability in favour
of the belief that the observation is as much a myth as the planet
itself. Some observations of Vulcan have certainly been invented. I have
received several letters purporting to describe observations of bodies
in transit over the sun's face, either the rate of transit, the size of
the body, or the path along which it was said to move, being utterly
inconsistent with the theory that it was an intra-mercurial planet,
while yet (herein is the suspicious circumstance of such narratives) the
epoch of transit accorded in the most remarkable manner with the period
assigned to Vulcan. A paradoxist in America (of Louisville, Kentucky)
who had invented a theory of the weather, in which the planets, by their
influence on the sun, were supposed to produce all weather-changes, the
nearer planets being the most effective, found his theory wanted Vulcan
very much. Accordingly, he saw Vulcan crossing the sun's face in
September, which, being half a year from March, is a month wherein,
according to Lescarbault's observation, Vulcan may be seen in transit,
and by a strange coincidence the interval between our paradoxist's
observation and Lescarbault's exactly contained a certain number of
times the period calculated by Leverrier for Vulcan. This was a noble
achievement on the part of our paradoxist. At one stroke it established
his theory of the weather, and promised to ensure him text-book
immortality as one of the observers of Vulcan. But, unfortunately, a
student of science residing in St. Louis, after leaving the Louisville
paradoxist full time to parade his discovery, heartlessly pointed out
that an exact number of revolutions of Vulcan after Lescarbault's March
observation, must of necessity have brought the planet on that side of
the sun on which the earth lies in March, so that to see Vulcan so
placed on the sun's face in September was to see Vulcan through the sun,
a very remarkable achievement indeed. The paradoxist was abashed, the
reader perhaps imagines. Not in the least. The planet's period must have
been wrongly calculated by Leverrier--that was all: the real period was
less than half as long as Leverrier had supposed; and instead of having
gone a certa