“I suspected that the moon’s action upon the equatorial parts of the earth might produce these effects: for if the precession of the equinox be, according to Sir Isaac Newton’s principles, caused by the actions of the sun and moon upon those parts, the plane of the moon’s orbit being at one time above ten degrees more inclined to the plane of the equator than at another, it was reasonable to conclude, that the part of the whole annual precession, which arises from her action, would in different years be varied in its quantity; whereas the plane of the ecliptic, wherein the sun appears, keeping always nearly the same inclination to the equator, that part of the precession which is owing to the sun’s action may be the same every year; and from hence it would follow, that although the mean annual precession, proceeding from the joint actions of the sun and moon, were 50″, yet the apparent annual precession might sometimes exceed and sometimes fall short of that mean quantity, according to the various situations of the nodes of the moon’s orbit.” Newton in his discussion of precession (chapter IX., § 188; _Principia_, Book III., proposition 21) had pointed out the existence of a small irregularity with a period of six months. But it is evident, on looking at this discussion of the effect of the solar and lunar attractions on the protuberant parts of the earth, that the various alterations in the positions of the sun and moon relative to the earth might be expected to produce irregularities, and that the uniform precessional motion known from observation and deduced from gravitation by Newton was, as it were, only a smoothing out of a motion of a much more complicated character. Except for the allusion referred to, Newton made no attempt to discuss these irregularities, and none of them had as yet been detected by observation.