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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" After the fall, Adam was driven from paradise, but he and his descendants 

 remained on the coasts until the deluge carried the ark of Noah to our present 

 earth. 



" On the four outsides of the earth rise four perpendicular walls which sur- 

 round it and join together at the top in a vault, the heavens forming the cupola 

 of this singular edifice. 



" The world according to Oosmas was, therefore, a large oblong box, and jt 

 was divided into two parts. The first, the abode of men, reaches from the earth 



Fig. 11. The Earth as an Egg. 



to the firmament, above which the stars accomplish their revolutions ; there 

 dwell the angels, who cannot go any higher. The second reaches upward from 

 the firmament to the upper vault, which crowns and terminates the world. On 

 this firmament rest the waters of the heavens. 



" Cosmas justifies this system by declaring that, according to the doctrine of 

 the fathers and the commentators on the Bible, the earth has the form of the 

 tabernacle that Moses erected in the desert ; which was like an oblong box, 

 twice as long as broad. But we may find other similarities for this land be- 

 yond the ocean recalls the Atlantic of the ancients, and the Mohammedans, and 

 Orientals in general, say that the earth is surrounded by a high mountain, which 

 is a similar idea to the walls of Cosmas. 



" God, he says, in creating the earth, rested it on nothing. The earth is, 

 therefore, sustained by the power of God, creator of all things, supporting all 

 things by the word of his power. If below the earth or outside of it anything 

 existed, it would fall of its own accord. So God made the earth the base of 

 the universe, and ordained that it should sustain itself by its own proper 

 gravity." 



Cosmas says that the earth, a sort of great square box circum- 

 scribed on all sides by high walls, is divided into three parts : first, the 

 habitable earth, which occupies the middle ; secondly, the ocean, which 

 surrounds this on all sides ; and, thirdly, another dry land, which sur- 

 rounds the ocean, terminated itself by these high walls, on which the 

 firmament rests. The habitable earth is always higher as we go 

 north, and the southern countries much lower, so that the Tigris and 

 the Euphrates, which run south, are more rapid than the Nile, which 

 runs northward. The sun, moon, planets, and comets, all set behind 



