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 discussions with the body of the work, he would have
laboured for astronomers only. If he had suppressed all discussions, 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 Chaldæa, of India, and of China.

After treating of certain ideas of Pluche, Bailly says, "The country of
possibilities is immense, and although truth is contained therein, it is
not often easy to distinguish it."

Words so reasonable would authorize me to inquire whether the
calculations of our fellow-labourer, intended to establish the immense