Besides this precession another or, more properly speaking, several others are produced indirectly by the action of the several planets upon the plane of the ecliptic. As these bodies are out of the plane themselves their action pulls the earth out of her orbital plane, causing a change in the obliquity of the ecliptic. There is in consequence a slow alteration in the place of the pole of the ecliptic and this results in a movement of the equator other than what the sun and moon produce. It is known as the planetary precession. Chiefly by such round-about process do the planets make themselves precessionally felt. For all of them, even Jupiter, are relatively too small and too distant to have their direct pull upon the earth's equatorial ring of any account. The direct precession due to Jupiter is only about 0".0001 a year and that caused by any other planet much less.
As all the planets are concerned in the work, and as they are all pulling different ways, the combined effect is not regular in either extent or duration, although there is a general swing to and fro of the ecliptic as the result. Its periods are much longer than the luni-solar precession. Thus, according to Leverrier, the one now going on had its maximum effect about 40,000 years ago and the next will be 35,000 years hence. This may be taken as about the mean swing; which shows that it is thrice that of the precession of the equinoxes properly so called. It is so combined with the latter, however, that though quite extensive in itself, amounting to more than 4°, it can never change the tilt of the ecliptic to the equator by more than 1°, one third on either side, so that our seasons
