That afternoon Ayrault brought out some statistical tables he had
compiled from a great number of books, and also a diagram of the
comparative sizes of the planets. "I have been not a little
puzzled at the discrepancies between even the best authors," he
said, "scarcely any two being exactly alike, while every decade
has seen accepted theories radically changed." Saying which, he
spread out the result of his labours (shown on the following
pages), which the three friends then studied.

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(1) Mean distance from sun in millions of miles
(2) Semimajor axis of orbit, earth's distance as 1
(3) Eccentricity of orbit
(4) Planets inclination of orbit to elliptic
(5) Light at perihelion
(6) Light at apehelion
(7) Heat, earth as 1

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Mercury... 36.0 0.387 0.2056 7@0'8" 10.58 4.59 6.67

Venus..... 67.2 0.723 0.0068 3@23'35" 1.94 1.91 1.91

The Earth. 92.9 1.000 0.068 0@0'0" 1.03 0.997 1.00

Mars......141.5 1.524 0.0933 1@51'2" 0.52 0.360 1.43