" Yet
he was genuinely puzzled by the fact that the two attendant bodies (as
he thought them) always retained the same position with regard to the
planet's disc, and did not appear to revolve around it, nor to be in any
wise shifted as a consequence of the movements of our earth.

About a year and a half elapsed before he again examined Saturn; and, if
he was previously puzzled, he was now thoroughly amazed. It happened
just then to be one of those periods when the ring is edgewise towards
the earth, and of course he only saw a round disc like that of Jupiter.
What, indeed, had become of the attendant orbs? Was some demon mocking
him? Had Saturn devoured his own children? He was, however, fated to be
still more puzzled, for soon the minor orbs reappeared, and, becoming
larger and larger as time went on, they ended by losing their globular
appearance and became like two pairs of arms clasping the planet from
each side! (see Plate XVI., p. 242).

Galileo went to his grave with the riddle still unsolved, and it
remained for the famous Dutch astronomer, Huyghens, to clear up the
matter. It was, however, some little time before he hit upon the real
explanation. Having noticed that there were dark spaces between the
strange appendages and the body of the planet, he imagined Saturn to be
a globe fitted with handles at each side; "ansae" these came to be
called, from the Latin _ansa_, which means a handle. At length, in the
year 1656, he solved the problem, and this he did by means of that
123-foot tubeless telescope, of which mention has already been made. The
ring happened then to be at its edgewise period, and a careful study of
the behaviour of the ansae when disappearing and reappearing soon
revealed to Huyghens the true explanation.

[Illustration: PLATE XVI. EARLY REPRESENTATIONS OF SATURN

From an illustration in the _Systema Saturnium_ of Christian Huyghens.

(Page 242)]

THE PLANETS URANUS AND NEPTUNE

We have already explained (in Chapter II.) the circumstances in which
both Uranus and Neptune were discovered. It should, however, be added
that after the discovery of Uranus, that planet was found to have been
already noted upon several occasions by different observers, but always
without the least suspicion that it was other than a mere faint star.
Again, with reference to the discovery of Neptune, it may here be
mentioned that the apparent amount by which that planet had pulled
Uranus out of its place upon