Monstrator.
In the _Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, February, 1877, Leverrier, who
never lost faith, up to the last day, gives the six observations upon an
unknown body of planetary size, that he had formulated:
Fritsche, Oct. 10, 1802; Stark, Oct. 9, 1819; De Cuppis, Oct. 30, 1839;
Sidebotham, Nov. 12, 1849; Lescarbault, March 26, 1859; Lummis, March
20, 1862.
If we weren't so accustomed to Science in its essential aspect of
Disregard, we'd be mystified and impressed, like the Editor of _Nature_,
with the formulation of these data: agreement of so many instances would
seem incredible as a coincidence: but our acceptance is that, with just
enough disregard, astronomers and fortune-tellers can formulate
anything--or we'd engage, ourselves, to formulate periodicities in the
crowds in Broadway--say that every Wednesday morning, a tall man, with
one leg and a black eye, carrying a rubber plant, passes the Singer
Building, at quarter past ten o'clock. Of course it couldn't really be
done, unless such a man did have such periodicity, but if some Wednesday
mornings it should be a small child lugging a barrel, or a fat negress
with a week's wash, by ordinary disregard that would be prediction good
enough for the kind of quasi-existence we're in.
So whether we accuse, or whether we think that the word "accuse"
over-dignifies an attitude toward a quasi-astronomer, or mere figment in
a super-dream, our acceptance is that Leverrier never did formulate
observations--