between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Of these,
considerably more than one hundred are claimed by one investigator
alone--Dr. Max Wolf of Heidelburg; M. Charlois of Nice comes second with
102; while among the earlier observers Palisa of Vienna contributed 86,
and C. H. F. Peters of Clinton (N. Y.), whose varied and useful career
terminated July 19, 1890, 52 to the grand total. The construction by
Chacornac and his successors at Paris, and more recently by Peters at
Clinton, of ecliptical charts showing all stars down to the thirteenth
and fourteenth magnitudes respectively, rendered the picking out of moving
objects above that brightness a mere question of time and diligence. Both,
however, are vastly economised by the photographic method. Tedious
comparisons of the sky with charts are no longer needed for the
identification of unrecorded, because simulated stars. Planetary bodies
declare themselves by appearing upon the plate, not in circular, but in
linear form. Their motion converts their images into trails, long or short
according to the time of exposure. The first asteroid (No. 323) thus
detected was by Max Wolf, December 22, 1891.[1014] Eighteen others were
similarly discovered in 1892, by the same skilful operator; and ten more
through Charlois's adoption at Nice of the novel plan now in exclusive use
for picking up errant light-specks. Far more onerous than the task of their
discovery is that of keeping them in view once discovered--of tracking out
their paths, ixing their places, and calculating the disturbing effects
upon them of the mighty Jovian mass. These complex operations have come to
be centralised at Berlin under the superintendence of Professor Tietjen,
and their results are given to the public through the medium of the
_Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch_.

The _cui bono?_ however, began to be agitated. Was it worth while to
maintain a staff of astronomers for the sole purpose of keeping hold
over the identity of the innumerable component particles of a cosmical
ring? The prospect, indeed, of all but a select few of the asteroids
being thrown back by their contemptuous captors into the sea of space
seemed so imminent that Professor Watson provided by will against the
dereliction of the twenty-two discovered by himself. But the fortunes of
the whole family improved through the distinction obtained by one of
them. On August 14, 1898, the trail of a rapidly-moving, star-like
object of the eleventh magni