on the Planet Venus. 
119 
In the German original of my paper, the translation of 
which is published in the Philosophical Transactions,* it stands 
thus : “ On the contrary, from the circumstance that no such 
“ evident flattened SPHERICAL form Is perceived in this 
“ planet (namely, at its poles) as in Jupiter and Saturn See. &c. 
The author indisputably agrees with me in all the truths 
there asserted. He has himself observed the flattened shape of 
Saturn at the poles more exactly than I, and even determined 
the proportion of the shorter to the longer axis. But in the 
translation, for the words “ abgeplattete kugelgestalt des Jupiter 
“ und Saturn is put “flat spherical forms fl See. which he un- 
derstood as if I pretended to have observed spherical spots on 
Saturn. The author might have convinced himself of the con- 
trary, by comparing the German original in the possession of 
the Royal Society. 
2. He considers it as an equally wonderful relation, that 
I have seen in Venus, in the same manner as in the moon, 
mountains and shadows of mountains, which were four or five 
times higher than our Chimborazo, and that I thence pre- 
tended to have determined the rotation of this planet ; on the 
contrary, he considers this last as hitherto undetermined, be- 
cause he has never found a trace of mountains, and all his obser- 
vations, for 16 years past, have been absolutely insufficient to 
ascertain it, though nothing of that kind could well have remained 
hid from him. 
Here it is not myself, but the truth, that I undertake to de- 
fend ; and I am convinced that if my memoir above men- 
tioned, on the Rotation of Venus, had been already known, 
* Observations on the Atmospheres of : Venus and the Moon; their respective Den- 
sities, perpendicular Heights, and the Twilight occasioned by them. Phil. Trans. 1 792.. 
