The
perturbations were due to some continuous cause--for instance, some
unknown planet. Could this planet be inside the orbit of Uranus? No, for
then it would perturb Saturn and Jupiter also, and they were not
perturbed by it. It must, therefore, be some planet outside the orbit of
Uranus, and in all probability, according to Bode's empirical law, at
nearly double the distance from the sun that Uranus is. Finally he
proceeded to determine where this planet was, and what its orbit must be
to produce the observed disturbances.
Not without failures and disheartening complications was this part of
the process completed. This was, after all, the real tug of war. Many
unknown quantities existed: its mass, its distance, its eccentricity,
the obliquity of its orbit, its position--nothing was known, in fact,
about the planet except the microscopic disturbance it caused in Uranus,
several thousand million miles away from it. Without going into further
detail, suffice it to say that in June, 1846, he published his last
paper, and in it announced to the world his theory as to the situation
of the planet.
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