Almost immediately, however, after the publication of the tables, fresh discrepancies arose between computation and observation. At the first meeting of the British Association in 1832 Professor Airy in a paper on the _Progress of Astronomy_ showed that observational data in reference to the planet Uranus diverged widely from the tables of 1821. In 1833 through his influence the "reduction of all the planetary observations made at Greenwich from 1750" was undertaken. Airy became Astronomer Royal in 1835, and continued to take special interest in Uranus, laying particular emphasis on the fact that the radius vector assigned in the tables to this planet was much too small. In 1834 the Reverend T. J. Hussey, an amateur astronomer, had written to Airy in reference to the irregularities in the orbit of Uranus: "The apparently inexplicable discrepancies between the ancient and modern observations suggested to me the possibility of some disturbing body beyond Uranus, not taken into account because unknown.... Subsequently, in conversation with Bouvard, I inquired if the above might not be the case." Bouvard answered that the idea had occurred to him; indeed, he had had some correspondence in reference to it in 1829 with Hansen, an authority on planetary perturbations. In the following year Nicolai (as well as Valz) was interested in the problem of an ultra-Uranian planet in connection with the orbit of Halley's comet (itself the subject of a striking scientific prediction fulfilled in 1758), now reappearing, and under the disturbing influence of Jupiter. In fact, the probability of the approaching discovery of a new planet soon found expression in popular treatises on astronomy. Mrs. Somerville in her book on _The Connection of the Physical Sciences_ (1836) said that the discrepancies in the records of Uranus might reveal the existence and even "the mass and orbit of a body placed for ever beyond the sphere of vision." Similarly Mädler in his _Popular Astronomy_ (1841) took the view that Uranus might have been predicted by study of the perturbations it produced in the orbit of Saturn. Applying this conclusion to a body beyond Uranus we, he continued, "may, indeed, express the hope that analysis will one day or other solemnize this, her highest, triumph, making discoveries with the mind's eye in regions where, in our actual state, we are unable to penetrate." One should not pass over in this account the labors of Eugène Bouvard, the nephew of Alexis, who continued to note anomalies in the orbit of Uranus and to construct new planetary tables till the very eve of the discovery of Neptune. In 1837 he wrote to Airy that the differences between the observations of Uranus and the calculation were large and were becoming continually larger: "Is that owing to a perturbation brought about in this planet by some body situated beyond it? I don't know, but that's my uncle's opinion."