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 beorinnino' of his book, 



* O 



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 Chaldaea, of India, and of China. 



After treating of certain ideas of Pluche, Bailly sav-. 

 "The country of possibilities is immense, and although 

 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, 



