nnounced
from Berlin. Sir George Airy's incredulity vanished in the face of the
striking coincidence between the position assigned by Leverrier to the
unknown planet in June, and that laid down by Adams in the previous
October; and on the 9th of July he wrote to Professor Challis, director
of the Cambridge Observatory, recommending a search with the great
Northumberland equatoreal. Had a good star-map been at hand, the process
would have been a simple one; but of Bremiker's "Hora XXI." no news had
yet reached England, and there was no other sufficiently comprehensive
to be available for an inquiry which, in the absence of such aid,
promised to be both long and laborious. As the event proved, it might
have been neither. "After four days of observing," Challis wrote,
October 12, 1846, to Airy, "the planet was in my grasp if only I had
examined or mapped the observations."[219] Had he done so, the first
honours in the discovery, both theoretical and optical, would have
fallen to the University of Cambridge. But Professor Challis had other
astronomical avocations to attend to, and, moreover, his faith in the
precision of the indications furnished to him was, by his own
confession, a very feeble one. For both reasons he postponed to a later
stage of the proceedings the discussion and comparison of the data
nightly furnished to him by his telescope, and thus allowed to lie, as
it were, latent in his observations the momentous result which his
diligence had insured, but which his delay suffered to be
anticipated.[220]

Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that the Berlin astronomer had
two circumstances in his favour apart from which his swift success could
hardly have been achieved. The first was the possession of a good
star-map; the second was the clear and confident nature of Leverrier's
instructions. "Look where I tell you," he seemed authoritatively to say,
"and you will see an object such as I describe."[221] And in fact, not
only Galle on the 23rd of September, but also Challis on the 29th,
immediately after reading the French geometer's lucid and impressive
treatise, picked out from among the stellar points strewing the zodiac,
a small planetary disc, which eventually proved to be that of the
precise body he had been in search of during two months.

The controversy that ensued had its ignominious side; but it was entered
into by neither of the parties principally concerned. Adams bore the
disappointment, which t