In Saturn's case we have very singular evidence to the same purpose. It was observed by Sir W. Herschel in April, 1805, that Saturn occasionally appears distorted, as though bulging out in the latitudes midway between the pole and the equator of the planet. Fig. 31 represents the appearance of the planet so far as shape is concerned, but the ring was not, when Sir W. Herschel observed it, so narrow as it is shown in fig. 31. In fact the ring had been turned edgewise to the earth two years before; and when Herschel noticed the abnormal appearance of Saturn, the rings had begun to open out, though their outermost outline was still far within the regions of the planet which seemed to project as shown. Fig. 31 in fact represents Saturn as seen by Schröter in 1803, when, as he said, the planet did not seem to present a truly spheroidal figure. Herschel tested his observations by using several telescopes of different dimensions,--ten, seven, twenty, and forty feet in length. In 1818, when the rings were scarcely visible, Kitchener saw the planet as shown in fig. 31, or "square-shouldered," as some have called it. On one occasion the present Astronomer-Royal saw the planet of that figure. In January, 1855, Coolidge, using the fine refractor of the Cambridge U.S. Observatory, noticed that the equatorial diameter was not the greatest; on the 9th the planet seemed of its usual shape; but on December 6, Coolidge writes, "I cannot persuade myself that it is an optical illusion which makes the maximum diameter of the ball intersect the limb half-way between the northern edge of the equatorial belt, and the inner ellipse of the inner bright ring." This was at a time when the rings were nearly at their greatest opening; so that, including Schröter's observation, we have Saturn out of shape when his ring has presented every shape between that shown in fig. 30 and that shown in fig. 31. Again, in the report of the Greenwich Observatory for 1860-61, when the ring was nearly closed, it is stated that "Saturn has _sometimes_ appeared to assume the square-shouldered aspect." Lastly, the eminent observers, G. Bond and G. P. Bond, father and son, have seen Saturn abnormally shaped, flattened unduly in the north polar regions in 1848, when the ring was turned edgewise towards us, and unsymmetrical in varying ways in 1855-57, when the ring was most widely opened. Yet the planet's outline is usually a perfect oval, and has been shown to be so by careful measurements effected in some instances by the same observers, who, making equally careful measurements, have found the planet to be distorted.