Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds

Transcriber Note: Toc Added to assist reader.
FONTENELLE.
One of the Forty belonging to the French Academy; and Secretary to the Academy of Sciences.
WITH NOTES,
AND A CRITICAL ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR'S WRITINGS,
JEROME DE LA LANDE ,
SENIOR DIRECTOR OF THE OBSERVATORY AT PARIS.
Translated from a late Paris Edition, by
MISS ELIZABETH GUNNING.
London: PRINTED BY J. CUNDEE, IVY-LANE; SOLD BY T. HURST, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1803.
Whenever I have entered into conversation with any sensible woman on astronomy, I have always found that she had read Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds; and that his book had excited her curiosity on the subject. As it has been so much read already, it must continue to engage attention: I therefore thought it would be useful to point out its faults; to add some observations, without which the reader would be led into error with respect to the vortices; to make known the late discoveries; and to shew what numbers, before our author, had written on the plurality of worlds. But I have made no alterations in the text; the reputation of Fontenelle renders him respectable, even in his mistakes.