FIGURE OF THE EARTH. 



BY SR. MIGUEL MERINO. 



Anuario del Real Obserratorio de Madrid; cuarto ano; 1863. 



TRANSLATED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ET 0. A. ALEXANDER. 



Ipf an article inserted in oiar Annual for 1862, under the same title with the 

 present, we proposed, as our nearly exclusive object, to present, in an elementary 

 manner, the result of the investigations heretofore made to determine the form 

 and volume of the earth, apart from historical notices, numerical details, and, 

 in a word, whatever might embarrass the course of the reasoning, or distract 

 the attention of our readers. Thus conceived and compiled, that first article 

 was for the most part dry, as regards results, and incomplete under various as- 

 pects. Dry, inasmuch as the mind takes less pleasure in the final solution of 

 a problem than in the survey of the means and computations employed to over- 

 come, one after another, the difficulties which beset it; and incomplete, because 

 without numbers there is in the physical sciences no precise solution, such as 

 shall leave the mind tranquil and satisfied. To supply our intentional omission 

 is the design of the present pages, in which, assuming the substance of our for- 

 mer article to be known, we shall consider, successively, and under the new 

 point of view just indicated, the three following points : 



First. In wiiat manner the human understanding, acted upon by the immediate 

 testimony of the senses, acquired, after a long uncertainty, a clear idea of the 

 roundness and rotation of the earth. 



Second. By what means that first idea, fovmded on a somewhat superficial ex- 

 amination, became confirmed, and, at the same time, modified in some of the de- 

 tails by the actual and direct measurement of our globe. 



Third. The present state of the question, briefly summed up in certain nu- 

 merical tables. 



In considering the progress of astronomy we must distinguish two epochs of 

 quite diff"cr(!nt character — one very remote, and only known to us by vague and 

 confused tradition, which has often undergone a strained interpretation ; the 

 other nearer to our own times, whose history has been consigned to unequivocal 

 and imperishable monuments. In the opinion of certain authors possessed of 

 erudition and talent, and doubtless sincere in their belief, but led astray possibly 

 by the excess of their imagination, the ancient people of central Asia, the 

 Chinese, Indians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, as wel^ as the Egyptians, enjoyed 

 a civilization superior to the modern, cultivated the sciences, and possessed, 

 particularly, a knowledge of celestial phenomena, to Avhich our present astrono- 

 mers cannot yet pretend. In the possible case that this were so, although the 

 mind instinctively revolts from believing it; that astronomy flourished at a period 

 of which history preserves no distinct traces, and that all which we know to- 



