1.[3]
[Footnote 3: I must re-mention that though this explanation is
made as simple as I possibly can make it, so far as words are
concerned, the figures present the result of an exact geometrical
investigation. Every dot, for instance, in Fig. 2, has had its
place separately determined by me.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2. ONE OF MARS'S LOOPS.]
This is one loop, you will understand, out of an immense number which
Mars makes in journeying round the earth, regarded as fixed. He
retreats to a great distance, swoops inward again toward the earth,
making a loop as in Fig. 2, and retreating again. Then he comes
again, makes another swoop, and a loop on another side, and so on.
He behaves, in fact, like that "little quiver fellow," a right
martialist, no doubt, who, as Justice Shallow tells us, "would about
and about, and come you in, and come you in,--and away again would a
go, and again would a come." The loops are not all of the same size.
The one shown in Fig. 2 is one of the smallest.
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