Cartes Elementaires d'Astronomie et de Geographie by Louis-Michel Pâris 1806

"Cartes Elementaires d'Astronomie et de Geographie" by Louis-Michel Pâris 1806

This deck of educational playing cars was published by Louis-Michel Pâris who was a French Catholic priest and teacher. Louis-Michel Pâris produced these card decks for use with his high school students. The deck consists of 42 cards in a cardboard box with each card covering a topic on geography or astronomy. The front of each card has a hand colored engraving, while the reverse contains an explanation of the subject of the card. The box is missing the lid and its bottom panel. Pierre-François Godard did the engraving for the cards. The set originally contained three volvelle cards. The volvelle for card 23 is complete. The moving part for the volvelle on card 42 is present but loose. The moving part for card 41 is missing. Louis-Michel â probably got the idea for these cards from John Wallis, who produced an almost identical deck of 40 cards in England in 1795, while Louis-Michel was in exile in London from 1792 through 1601. The only major difference between the decks produced by Pâris' and Wallis' is that Pâris added two additional cards (cards numbered 41 and 42, both both of which contained volvelles). The printed rules explain that the cards are dealt out with the eldest player first starting the game, whoever has the highest number in a round wins a trick and can take as may tokens from a pool of ‘fish’ as there are cards in the trick. However, before they can take possession of such a prize the player has to explain the cards in the trick without looking at the explanation on the back – failing this task their cards fall to the next eldest, and so on until a winner is found.