placed, being so designed as properly to indicate the needle’s declination. On the celestial globe the greater and the lesser circles were represented in gilt bronze, and were so graduated for both latitude and longitude, ascension and declination, that it was made easy for an astronomer to pass from one co-ordinate to the other without the aid of trigonometry. On a fine background of ultramarine the several constellations with their respective figures were represented, each of the planets and fixed stars being gilded in order to give it due prominence. The author so designed his star map as to represent the appearance of the heavens at the time of the birth of the Grand Monarch,[96] as is told in the following dedication engraved on a brass tablet and attached to the surface of the sphere: “A l’Auguste Majesté de Louis le Grand l’Invincible, l’Heureux, le Sage, le Conquerant. Cesar Cardinal d’Estrées a consacré ce globe celeste, ou toutes les etoilles du firmament, et les planetes sont placées au lieu mesme, ou elles estoient a la naissance de ce Glorieux Monarque, afin de conserver a l’eternite une image fixe de cette heureuse disposition, sous laquelle la France a receu le plus grand present, que le ciel ait iamais fait a la terre. M.DC.LXXXIII.” “To His August Majesty Louis the Great, the Invincible, the Happy, the Wise, the Conquering. Cesar Cardinal d’Estrées has dedicated this celestial globe, on which all the stars of heaven and the planets are placed in the same position in which they were at the birth of the Glorious Monarch, in order to preserve throughout eternity a fixed image of that happy disposition under which France has received the most noble present which Heaven has ever made to earth.”