Cornish Characters and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

I C ADAMS A M
From the collection of Mrs. Lewis Lane

His father, finding that his inclinations were not for farm work, sent him to study with a relative of his mother, the Rev. P. Couch Grylls, who had a school at Devonport, but later moved to Saltash. All his spare time John Couch spent in reading astronomical works, which he obtained from the library of the Mechanics' Institute; he drew maps of constellations and computed celestial phenomena. A day long to be remembered by him as one of the happiest in his life was that in which he obtained a look through a telescope at the moon. "Why," he exclaimed, "they have Brown Willy and Rough Tor up there!"

His account of a solar eclipse viewed at Devonport through a small spyglass got into print in a London paper. After three weeks' watching he caught sight of Halley's Comet on 16th October, 1839.

His father now with considerable effort arranged to send him to the University of Cambridge, and he entered S. John's College as a poor sizar in October, 1839; he graduated as Senior Wrangler in 1843, and was first Smith's prizeman, and soon elected Fellow and appointed tutor of his college.

At the age of twenty-two he was struck with the disturbance in the course of the planet Uranus, and he perceived that this must be due to the attraction possessed by some other planet, as yet unseen and unsuspected, that produced these perturbations. How this led to the discovery of the planet Neptune shall be told from the Reminiscences of Caroline Fox:—

"1847, October 7th.—Dined at Carclew, and spent a very interesting evening. We met Professor Adams, the Bullers, the Lord of the Isles, and others. Adams is a quiet-looking man, with a broad forehead, a mild face, and an amiable and expressive mouth. I sat by him at dinner, and by general and dainty approaches got at the subject on which one most wished to hear him speak. He began very blushingly, but went on to talk in most delightful fashion, with large and luminous simplicity, of some of the vast mathematical facts with which he is so conversant. The idea of the reversed method of reasoning, from an unknown to a known, with reference to astronomical problems dawned on him when an undergraduate, with neither time nor mathematics to work it out. The opposite system had always before been adopted. He, in common with many others, conceived that there must be a planet to account for the disturbances of Uranus; and when he had time he set to work at the process, in deep, quiet faith that the fact was there, and that his hitherto untried mathematical path was the one which must reach it; that there were no anomalies in the universe, but that, even here, and now, they could be explained and included in a higher law. The delight of working it out was far more than any notoriety could give, for his love of pure truth is evidently intense, an inward necessity, unaffected by all the penny trumpets of the world. Well, at length he fixed his point in space, and sent his mathematical evidence to Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who locked the papers up in his desk, partly from carelessness, partly from incredulity, for it seemed to him impossible that a man whose name was unknown to him should strike out a new path in mathematical science with any success. Moreover, his theory was, that if there were a planet, it would not be discovered for one hundred and sixty years; that is, until two revolutions of Uranus had been accomplished. Then came Leverrier's equally original, though many months younger, demonstration; Gull's immediate verification of it by observation; and then the other astronomers were all astir. Professor Adams speaks of those about whom the English scientific world is so indignant in a spirit of Christian philosophy, exactly in keeping with the mind of a man who has discovered a planet. He speaks with warmest admiration of Leverrier, specially of his exhaustive method of making out the orbits of the comets, imagining and disproving all tracks but the right one—a work of infinite labour. If the observer could make out distinctly but a very small part of a comet's orbit, the mathematician would be able to prove what its course had been through all time. They enjoyed being a good deal together at the British Association Meeting at Oxford, though it was unfortunate for the intercourse of the fellow-workers that one could not speak French nor the other English. He had met with very little mathematical sympathy, except from Challis, of the Cambridge Observatory; but when his result was announced there was noise enough and to spare. He was always fond of star-gazing and speculation, and is already on the watch for another planet. Burnard told us that when Professor Adams came from Cambridge to visit his relatives in Cornwall he was employed to sell sheep for his father at a fair. He is a most good son and neighbour, and watchful in the performance of small acts of thoughtful kindness."

"1863, July 2nd.—Have just returned from a visit to Professor Adams at Cambridge. He is so delightful in the intervals of business, enjoying all things, large and small, with a boyish zest. He showed and explained the calculating machine (French, not Babbage's), which saves him much in time and brain, as it can multiply or divide ten figures accurately. We came upon an admirable portrait of him at S. John's College, before he accepted a Pembroke Fellowship and migrated thither."

The first mention of the name of Adams as the discoverer of Neptune was by Sir John Herschel, in the Athenæum, on October 3rd, 1845. And a letter from Professor Challis to that journal on 17th October described in detail the transactions between Adams, Airy, and himself. Naturally enough the French were highly incensed at the notion that an obscure Englishman had forestalled Leverrier in the discovery, and Airy himself was annoyed at his own negligence in not looking into the memoir by Adams, and took up the matter with some personal feeling. It was certainly startling to realize that the Astronomer Royal had had in his possession data that would have enabled the planet to be discovered nearly a year before Leverrier had, by a different course of argument and calculation, arrived at the conclusion that there existed a planet which was the disturbing element in the orbit of Uranus. As to Adams himself, he had not a particle of conceit and pride in him; he did not care to have his name proclaimed as the discoverer. Forty years later, he said simply and characteristically that all he had wished for was that English astronomers to whom he had communicated the result of his calculations, pointing out the precise spot in the sky where a planet was to be found, would have taken the trouble to turn their telescopes upon that point and discover the planet, so that England might have had the full credit of the discovery.