"Hæc immatura a me jam frustra leguntur o. y."
(These unripe things are now vainly gathered by me.)
He first saw Venus as gibbous; a few months revealed it as crescent, and then he transposed his anagram into:
"Cynthiæ figuras æmulatur mater amorum."
(The mother of loves imitates the phases of Cynthia.)
Many things that were once supposed to be known concerning Venus are not confirmed by later and better observations. Venus is surrounded by an atmosphere so dense with clouds that it is conceded that her time of rotation and the inclination of her axis cannot be determined. She revealed one of the grandest secrets of the universe to the first seeker; showed her highest beauty to her first ardent lover, and has veiled herself from the prying eyes of later comers.
Florence has built a kind of shrine for the telescope of Galileo. By it he discovered the phases of Venus, the spots on the sun, the mountains of the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, and some irregularities of shape in Saturn, caused by its rings. Galileo subsequently became blind, but he had used his eyes to the best purpose of any man in his generation.
THE EARTH.
Its sign
.
Distance from the sun, 92,500,000 miles. Diameter, polar, 7899 miles; equatorial, 7925-1/2 miles. Axial revolution, 23h. 56m. 4.09s.; orbital, 365.86. Orbital velocity per minute, 1152.8 miles.