Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/85

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THE INNER PLANETS
59

edge has been vitally affected by modern discoveries about them, it is imperative that this exposition of the facts should be as near as possible abreast of the research itself. I shall, therefore, give the reader

Orbits of the Inner Planets

in this chapter a bird's-eye view of the present state of planetary astronomy, which he will find almost a different part of speech from what it was thirty years ago. It is not so much in our knowledge of their paths as of their persons that our acquaintance with