Astronomie : autograph manuscript.

A collection of manuscript notes and short items covering a variety of topics relevant to the study of astronomy, evidently dating from the 1890s, and including the writings of classical authors as well as new astronomical ideas, many evidently based on the work of Herve Faye and Anatole Bouquet de la Grye, astronomers named by A. France at the bottom of the pages; contemporary topics touched upon include the rotation of Venus (de la Grye), the shape and rotation of the fourth moon of Jupiter (information from Mr. Holden, Director of the Mount Hamilton Observatory, California), and the discovery of 9 new stars and the length of time required for their light to reach earth), the visibility of eclipses caused by planets in other solar systems passing between their central star and earth (Faye), the irregular movement of the star Procyon [Alpha Canis Minoris], double stars in which the companion star is dark and has a gravitational pull on the visible one and [Agnes Mary] Clerke's observations on this subject about the star Rigel [Beta Orionis], the inhospitableness of Venus, and the rotation and revolution of Mercury and Venus; also included is a collection of short items about Pythagorean astronomy; an explanation of the Systeme de Philolaos [The System of Philolaus], an explanation of Philolaus's theories about the earth, the sun, and the moon, with France's hand-drawn version of Philolaus's map of the orbits of the planets (including Earth and the counterearth), sun, and moon around the Vesta Fire, center of the cosmos; with additional observations on Aristarchus of Samos as the true creator of the heliocentric model that we attribute to Copernicus; observing that the stars could be imagined to be spread throughout infinite space after the dissolution of the school of Philolaus and Archytas and the prominence of their theories to the contrary and mentioning that New Pythagoreans taught a doctrine that each star is a world including a planet with air in an infinite ether. With a sheet of paper wrapped around the manuscript pages, and labeled "Astronomie."