Captain Sabine on the Figure of the Earth. 141 



sion, modestly tells us, that Berzelius and Dulong are in error by 

 -j^th part, while his own results are quite correct ; though in 

 reality they are incomparably more inaccurate, when their errors 

 are not veiled by counterbalancing errors in arithmetic. 



There are a few passages of his work composed in a better 

 spirit, and rather freer from the arrogance that blinds him. On 

 these we would willingly have bestowed commendation, had the 

 author not forestalled for himself every laudatory form of ex- 

 pression. 



II. An Account of Experiments to determine the Figure of the 

 Earth by means of the Pendulum vibrating Seconds in different 

 Latitudes ; and on various other Subjects of Philosophical Inquiry. 

 By Captain Edward Sabine^F.R.S. &c. Printed at the Expense 

 of the Board of Longitude. Murray. 



[The following- Review of the first part of Captain Sabine's Work, namely 

 of his Experiments on the Figure of the Earth, has been transmitted 

 to us from a Correspondent in the United States. We are glad to 

 perceive that the Works of British Science are so quickly and so 

 justly appreciated on the other side of the Atlantic] 



From the time of the first cultivation of science, the size and 

 figure of the earth have been objects of inquiiy. To an ignorant 

 and superficial observer, it presents the appearance of an ex- 

 tended plane ; to the earliest cultivators of Astronomy, it shewed 

 an evident curvature in the direction of the meridian ; and it was 

 not long before a curvature in a transverse direction was also 

 detected by means of a difference in the apparent time of the oc- 

 currence of Lunar eclipses in different places : hence the earth 

 was justly inferred to be of a figure nearly spherical. Other ob- 

 servations have confirmed the near approach of this inference to 

 the truth : the shape of the section of the shadow in lunar eclipses 

 is always circular ; the appearance of great expanses of water is 

 manifestly spherical ; ships in departing from the shore are hid- 

 den by the curvature of the earth, long before distance alone 

 could render them invisible ; and Humboldt, upon the Peak of 

 Teneriffe, observed an angle of 92° between his visible horizon 

 and the zenith. All these, and innumerable other facts, lead to 

 the confirmation of the received opinion, that the earth is, if not 

 an exact sphere, of a shape that differs but little from that re- 

 gular geometric solid. 



Were the earth at rest in space, and had it originally existed 

 in a fluid state, its several particles would, by their mutual at- 

 traction, have arranged themselves in a spherical form ; had the 

 matter of which it is composed been incompressible and homo- 

 geneous, this sphere would have been of equal density through- 



