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The seeming gap in the solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter naturally attracted the attention of astronomers as soon as the distances of the planets had been accurately laid down. It became very striking when Bode announced his law. There was a row of eight numbers in regular progression, and every number but one represented the distance of a planet. That one place was vacant. Was the vacancy real, or was it only because the planet which filled it was so small that it had escaped notice?

This question was settled by Piazzi, an Italian astronomer who had a little observatory in Palermo in Sicily. He was an ardent observer of the heavens, and was engaged in making a catalogue of all the stars whose positions he could lay down with his instrument. On January 1, 1801, he inaugurated the new century by finding a star where none had existed before; and this star soon proved to be the long-looked-for planet. It received the name of Ceres, the goddess of the wheat field.

It was a matter of surprise that the planet should be so small; and when its orbit became known it proved to be very eccentric. But new revelations were soon to come. Before the new planet had completed a revolu-