The spots being considered as solar storms, they ought also to vary in number at different times of the year, according to the longitude of the earth and sun, and from their transient character, and the slow rotation of the sun, they ought, _ceteris paribus_, to be more numerous when the producing vortex is over a visible portion of the sun's surface.
The difficulty of reconciling the solar spots, and their periodicity to any known principle of physics, ought to produce a more tolerant spirit amongst the scientific for speculations even which may afford the slightest promise of a solution, although emanating from the humblest inquirer after truth. The hypothesis of an undiscovered planet, exterior to Neptune, is of a nature to startle the cautions timidity of many; but, if the general theory be true, this hypothesis becomes extremely probable. We may not have located it exactly. There may be even two such planets, whose joint effect shall be equivalent to one in the position we have assigned. There may even be a comet of great mass, capable of producing an effect on the position of the sun's centre (although it follows from the theory that comets have very little mass). Yet, in view of all these suppositions, there can be but little doubt that the solar spots are caused by the solar vortices, and these last made effective on the sun by the positions of the great planets, and, therefore, we have indicated a new method of determining the existence and position of all the planets exterior to Neptune. On the supposition that there is only one more in the system, from its deduced distance and mass, it will appear only as a star of the eleventh magnitude, and, consequently, will only be recognizable by its motion, which, at the greatest, will only be ten or eleven seconds per day.
We have alluded to the fact of the radial stream of the sun necessarily diminishing the sun's power, and, consequently, diminishing his apparent mass. The radial stream of all the planets will do the same, so that each planet whose mass is derived from the periodic times of the satellites, will also appear too small. But, there is also a great probability that some modification must be made in the wording of the Newtonian law. The experiments of Newton on the pendulum, with every variety of substance, was sufficient justification to entitle him to infer, that inertia was as the weight of matter universally. But, there was one condition which could not be observed in experimenting on these substances, viz., the difference of temperature existing between the interior and surface of a planet.