turbing body, be it sun or moon, is situated in the plane of the earth's equator.

(646.) This reasoning is evidently independent of any consideration of the cause which maintains the rotation of the ring; whether the particles be small satellites retained in circular orbits under the equilibrated action of attractive and centrifugal forces, or whether they be small masses conceived as attached to a set of imaginary spokes, as of a wheel, centering in S, and free only to shift their planes by a motion of those spokes perpendicular to the plane of the wheel. This makes no difference in the general effect; though the different velocities of rotation, which may be impressed on such a system, may and will have a very great influence both on the absolute and relative magnitudes of the two effects in question - the motion of the nodes and change of inclination. This will be easily understood, if we suppose the ring without a rotatory motion, in which extreme case it is obvious that so long as M remained fixed there would take place no recess of nodes at all, but only a tendency of the ring to tilt its plane round a diameter perpendicular to the position of M, bringing it towards the line S M.

(647.) The motion of such a ring, then, as we have been considering, would imitate, so far as the recess of the nodes goes, the precession of the equinoxes, only that its nodes would retrograde far more rapidly than the observed precession, which is excessively slow. But now conceive this ring to be loaded with a spherical mass enormously heavier than itself, placed concentrically within it, and cohering firmly to it, but indifferent, or very nearly so, to any such cause of motion; and suppose, moreover, that, instead of one such ring there are a vast multitude heaped together around the equator of such a globe, so as to form an elliptical protuberance, enveloping it like a shell on all sides, but whose mass, taken together, should form but a very minute fraction of the whole spheroid. We have now before us a tolerable representation of the case of nature;' and it is evident that the rings, having to drag round with them in their nodal

That a perfect sphere would be so inert and indifferent as to a revolution of the nodes of its equator under the influence of a distant attracting body appears from this, that the direction of the resultant attraction of such a body, or of that single force which, opposed, would neutralize and destroy its whole action, is necessarily in a line passing through the centre of the sphere, and, therefore, can have no tendency to turn the sphere one way or other. It may be objected by the reader, that the whole sphere may be conceived as consisting of rings parallel to its equator, of every possible diameter, and that, therefore, its nodes should retrograde even without a protuberant equator. The inference is incorrect, but our limits will not allow us to go into an exposition of the fallacy. We should, however, caution him, generally, that no dynamical subject is open to more mistakes of this kind, which nothing but the closest attention, in every varied point of view, will detect.

revolution this great inert mass, will have their velocity of retrogradation proportionally diminished. Thus, then, it is easy to conceive how a motion similar to the precession of the equinoxes, and, like it, characterized by extreme slowness, will arise from the causes in action.

(648.) Now a recess of the node of the earth's equator, upon a given plane, corresponds to a conical motion of its axis round a perpendicular to that plane. But in the case before us, that plane is not the ecliptic, but the moon's orbit for the time being; and it may be asked how we are to reconcile this with what is stated in art. 317 respecting the nature of the motion in question. To this we reply, that the nodes of the lunar orbit, being in a state of continual and rapid retrogradation, while its inclination is preserved nearly invariable, the point in the sphere of the heavens round which the pole of the earth's equator revolves (with that extreme slowness characteristic of the precession) is itself in a state of continual circulation round the pole of the ecliptic, with that much more rapid motion which belongs to the lunar node. A glance at the annexed figure will

explain this better than words. P is the pole of the ecliptic, A the pole of the moon's orbit, moving round the small circle A B C D in 19 years; a the pole of the earth's equator, which at each moment of its progress has a direction perpendicular to the varying position of the line A a, and a velocity depending on the varying intensity of the acting causes during the period of the nodes. This velocity however being extremely small, when A comes to B, C, D, E, the line A a will have taken up the positions B b, C c, D d, E e, and the earth's pole a will thus, in one tropical revolution of the node, have arrived at e, having described not an exactly circular arc a e, but a single undulation of a wave-shape or epicycloidal curve, a b c d e, with a velocity alternately greater and less than its mean

motion, and this will be repeated in every succeeding revolution of the node.

(649.) Now this is precisely the kind of motion which, as we have seen in art. 325, the pole of the earth's equator really has round the pole of the ecliptic, in consequence of the joint effects of precession and nutation, which are thus uranographically represented. If we superadd to the effect of lunar precession that of the solar, which alone would cause the pole to describe a circle uniformly about P, this will only affect the undulations of our waved curve, by extending them in length, but will produce no effect on the depth of the waves, or the excursions of the earth's axis to and from the pole of the ecliptic. Thus we see that the two phenomena of nutation and precession are intimately connected, or rather both of them essential constituent parts of one and the same phenomenon. It is hardly necessary to state that a rigorous analysis of this great problem, by an exact estimation of all the acting forces and summation of their dynamical effects, leads to the precise value of the co-efficients of precession and nutation, which observation assigns to them. The solar and lunar portions of the precession of the equinoxes, that is to say, those portions which are uniform, are to each other in the proportion of about 2 to 5.

(650.) In the nutation of the earth's axis we have an example (the first of its kind which has occurred to us), of a periodical movement in one part of the system, giving rise to a motion having the same precise period in another. The motion of the moon's nodes is here, we see, represented, though under a very different form, yet in the same exact periodic time, by a movement of a peculiar oscillatory kind impressed on the solid mass of the earth. We must not let the opportunity pass of generalizing the principle involved in this result, as it is one which we shall find again and again exemplified in every part of physical astronomy, nay, in every department of natural science. It may be stated as "the principle of forced oscillations, or of forced vibrations," and thus generally announced :—

If one part of any system connected either by material ties, or by the mutual attractions of its members, be continually maintained by any cause, whether inherent in the constitution of the system or external to it, in a state of regular periodic motion, that motion will be propagated throughout the whole systems, and will give rise, in every member of it and in every part of each member, to periodic movements executed in equal period, with that to which they owe their origin, though not necessarily synchronous with them in their maxima and minima.'

See a demonstration of this theorem for the forced vibrations of systems connected by material ties of imperfect elasticity, in my treatise on Sound, Encyc. Metrop. art. 323. The demonstration is easily extended and generalized to take in other systems.

The system may be favourably or unfavourably constituted for such a transfer of periodic movements, or favourably in some of its parts and unfavourably in others; and accordingly as it is the one or the other, the derivative oscillation (as it may be termed) will be imperceptible in one case, of appreciable magnitude in another, and even more perceptible in its visible effects than the original cause in a third; of this last kind we have an instance in the moon's acceleration, to be hereafter noticed.

(651.) It so happens that our situation on the earth, and the delicacy which our observations have attained, enable us to make it as it were an instrument to feel these forced vibrations, these derivative motions, communicated from various quarters, especially from our near neighbour, the moon, much in the same way as we detect, by the trembling of a board beneath us, the secret transfer of motion by which the sound of an organ-pipe is dispersed through the air, and carried down into the earth. Accordingly, the monthly revolution of the moon, and the annual motion of the sun, produce, each of them, small nutations in the earth's axis, whose periods are respectively half a month and half a year, each of which, in this view of the subject, is to be regarded as one portion of a period consisting of two equal and similar parts. But the most remarkable instance, by far, of this propagation of periods, and one of high importance to mankind, is that of the tides, which are forced oscillations, excited by the rotation of the earth in an ocean disturbed from its figure by the varying attractions of the sun and moon, each revolving in its own orbit, and propagating its own period into the joint phenomenon. The explanation of the tides, however, belongs more properly to that part of the general subject of perturbations which treats of the action of the radial component of the disturbing force, and is therefore postponed to a subsequent chapter.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THEORY OF THE AXES, PERIHELIA, AND EXCENTRICITIES.

VARIATION OF ELEMENTS IN GENERAL. -DISTINCTION BETWEEN PERIODIC AND SECULAR VARIATIONS. -GEOMETRICAL EXPRESSION OF TANGENTIAL AND NORMAL FORCES.- VARIATION OF THE MAJOR AXIS PRODUCED ONLY BY THE TANGENTIAL FORCE.-LAGRANGE'S THEOREM OF THE CONSERVATION OF THE MEAN DISTANCES AND PERIODS. THEORY OF THE PERIHELIA AND EXCENTRICITIES. GEOMETRICAL

TIONS. ESTIMATION
CIRCULAR ORBITS.

REPRESENTATION OF THEIR MOMENTARY VARIAOF THE DISTURBING FORCES IN NEARLY APPLICATION TO THE CASE OF THE MOON. THEORY OF THE LUNAR APSIDES AND EXCENTRICITY. EXPERIMENTAL ILLUSTRATION.- APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES TO THE PLANETARY THEORY. VERY NEARLY CIRCULAR. RESULTS.

COMPENSATION IN ORBITS EFFECTS OF ELLIPTICITY. GENERAL LAGRANGE'S THEOREM OF THE STABILITY OF THE

EXCENTRICITIES.

(652.) IN the foregoing chapter we have sufficiently explained the action of the orthogonal component of the disturbing force, and traced it to its results in a continual displacement of the plane of the disturbed orbit, in virtue of which the nodes of that plane alteruately advance and recede upon the plane of the disturbing body's orbit, with a general preponderance on the side of advance, so as after the lapse of a long period to cause the nodes to make a complete revolution and come round to their former situation. At the same time the inclination of the plane of the disturbed motion continually changes, alternately increasing and diminishing; the increase and diminution, however, compensating each other, nearly in single revolutions of the disturbed and disturbing bodies, more exactly in many, and with perfect accuracy in long periods, such as those of a complete revolution of the nodes and apsides. In the present and following chapters we shall endeavour to trace the effects of the other components of the disturbing force, those which act in the plane (for