Although the planet was actually discovered by following the directions of Leverrier, it was found that it might have been seen months before if the English astronomers had shown more promptness in using the computations of Adams; and there has always been a disposition among astronomers, both in France and in England, to give both men credit for their extraordinary achievement, though, naturally, there is somewhat more stress laid upon the work of each in his own country. The newly discovered body was at first named for its discoverer, Leverrier, but a sense of justice to Adams prevailed to such an extent that in the end a less commemorative name was chosen, and the planet was called after Neptune, the son of Saturn and the brother of Jupiter--a name more fitting, on the whole, for a member of this planet family, whose other members all bear the names of some of the ancient deities. The trident (♆), Neptune’s three-pronged spear, is the symbol of the planet. The mean distance of Neptune from the sun is more than two and a half billion miles (2,790,000,000), and his orbit is so nearly circular that the variation between his perihelion and aphelion distance is only about fifty million miles. His orbit is, in fact, less eccentric than that of any other planet except Venus. His immense distance from the sun, of course, deprives him of any great amount of heat or light from that source as compared with the other planets. The sun would appear to an observer on Neptune a little smaller than Venus appears to us. But so great is the intensity of its radiance that even as so diminutive a sun as that it would give to Neptune more than six hundred times as much light as our full moon gives to us. This, however, would be as much as nine hundred times less light than we get from the sun. Such light as the planet receives from the sun reaches it after a journey of a little more than four hours. Of the heat the planet has, either inherent or acquired from the sun, we do not know much. The normal temperature at that distance from the sun would be more than three hundred and sixty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, and there is not much to indicate in what state the planet is with reference to its own heat. Investigations thus far made do not show it to be so intensely hot as Jupiter and Saturn undoubtedly are; but with its heavily vapor-laden atmosphere it could not have the frigidity normal to a black, unprotected body at its distance from the sun.