Excerpt from Brookes's General Gazetteer Improved, or a New and Compendious Geographical Dictionary: Containing a Description of the Empires, Kingdoms, States, Provinces, Cities, Towns, Forts, Seas, Harbours, Rivers, Lakes, Mountains, Capes, &C. In the Known World The planets are all opaque spherical bodies, and have no light of their own, but shine by means of that borrowed light which they receive from the Sun'. From the regular appearance and disappearance of several re markable dark spots, which, by means of a telescope, are constantly to be seen on their bodies, it may be demonstrated, that each has a, motion round its axis, and from their seeming sometimes to be stationary, ahd at other times retrograde, it is equally certain, they must have a progressive motion round the Sun. As the Earth, moreover, is similar to the other six planets, it may reasonably be concluded, by analogy, that they must be designed for the same purposes, although, from their different proportions of heat and cold, .it is not credible that beings of our make and tempera ment could live upon all of them. W'e now proceed to the consideration of each planet in particular. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.