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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ceived that the great earth-egg should not be left without some kind 

 of support. To meet this requirement Edrisi, an Arabian geographer 

 of the eleventh century, broached the idea that the earth is like an 

 egg, with one-half plunged in water. According to him, the known 

 world forms only a single half of the egg, which floats in the great 

 ocean like an egg in a basin. This notion got currency with artists 

 and map-makers, and continued, it is said, as a mode of representing 

 the earth for many centuries. 



Fig. 13. Eighth-Century Map of the World. 



"In a manuscript commentary on the Apocalypse, which is in the library 

 of Turin, is a very curious chart, referred to the tenth, but belonging possibly to 

 the eighth century. It represents the earth as a circular planisphere. The four 

 sides of the earth are each accompanied by a figure of a wind, as a horse on a 

 bellows, from which air is poured out, as well as from a shell in his mouth. 

 Above, or to the east, are Adam and Eve, with the serpent. To their right is 

 Asia, with two very elevated mountains Cappadocia and Caucasus. Thence 

 comes the river Eusis, and the sea into which it falls forms an arm of the 

 ocean which surrounds the earth. This arm joins the Mediterranean, and sepa- 

 rates Europe from Asia. Toward the middle is Jerusalem, with two curious 

 arms of the sea running past it ; while to the south there is a long and straight 

 sea in an east and west direction. The various islands of the Mediterranean are 

 put in a square patch, and Rome, France, and Germany, are indicated, while 

 Thula, Britannia, and Scotia, are marked as islands in the northwest of the ocean 

 that surrounds the whole world." 



