i ae = Sey pad ~2, — A 
HIS HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY. 115 
This vast plan essentially led to the minute discussion 
and comparison of a multitude of passages both ancient . 
and modern. If the author had mixed up these discus- 
sions with the body of the work, he would have laboured 
for astronomers only. If he had suppressed all discus- 
sions, the book would have interested amateurs only. 
To avoid this double rock, Bailly decided on writing a 
connected narrative with the quintessence of the facts, 
and to place the proofs and the discussions of the merely 
conjectural parts, under the appellation’ of explanations 
in separate chapters. Bailly’s History, without forfeiting 
the character of a serious and erudite work, became 
accessible to the public in general, and contributed to 
disseminate accurate notions of Astronomy both among 
literary men and among general society. 
When Bailly declared, in the beginning of his book, 
that he would go back to the very commencement of 
Astronomy, the reader might expect some pages of pure 
imagination. I know not, however, whether any body 
would have expected a chapter of the first volume to be 
entitled, Of Antediluvian Astronomy. 
The principal conclusion to which Bailly comes, after 
an attentive examination of all the positive ideas that 
antiquity has bequeathed to us is, that we find rather the 
ruins than the elements of a science in the most ancient 
Astronomy of Chaldza, of India, and of China. 
After treating of certain ideas of Pluche, Bailly says, 
“The country of possibilities is immense, and although se 
truth is contained therein, it is not often easy to distin- 
guish it.” 
Words so reasonable would authorize me to inquire 
whether the calculations of our fellow-labourer, intended 
to establish the immense antiquity of the Indian ‘Tables, 
