'of the Surface of the Earth. 109 



of our planet is covered with water, we are the less sur- 

 prised at the imperfect state of meteorology up to the pre- 

 sent century : an epoch in which, for the first time, a consi- 

 derable number of accurate observations on the temperature 

 of the sea in different latitudes, and in different seasons, were 

 obtained, and numerically compared with one another. 



The horizontal configui'ation of the solid land, considered 

 with reo-ard to the most general relations of its extension, 

 was a subject of ingenious investigation in the early periods of 

 Grecian antiquity. The maximum of its extension from west 

 to east was investigated, and Dicearchus, according to the 

 testimony of Agathemerus, determined it to be in the latitude 

 of Rhodes, in a dh-ection running from the Pillars of Hercules 

 to Thince. This is the line which has been termed the jm- 

 rallel of the diaphragm of Dicearchus, and the astronomical 

 accuracy of whose position (investigated by me elsewhere) 

 must be regarded with astonishment.* Strabo, guided pro- 

 bably by Eratosthenes, seems to have been so convinced that 

 this parallel of 36°, regarded as the maximum of the exten- 

 sion of the world known to him, had an internal cause of con- 

 figuration, that he predicted the existence, in the same lati- 

 tude, of the solid land whose presence he prophetically con- 

 jectured in the northern hemisphere between Iberia and the 

 coast of Thinse.t 



While, as we have already remarked, a considerably larger 

 portion of land has been elevated above the level of the sea 

 in the one hemisphere of the eai-th than in the opposite (whe- 

 ther the globe be halved through the equator, or through the 

 meridian of Teneriflfe) ; both the great masses of land, which 



D'Ailly {Imarjo Mundi, cap. 8^ founded on a passage in the Apocrypha. 

 Columbus, who always drew his cosmological knowledge from the works 

 of the Cardinal, had a great interest in defending this opinion as to the 

 smallness of the sea, to which, no doubt, the misunderstood expression 

 of the " River Ocean" had led. Vide llunholdt, Examcn Criliquc dc I'Hist. 

 de la Gcograplde, t. i. p. 1S6. 



* Agathemerus in Hudson, Gcofjrapln Minorca, t 2, p. 4. Vide Hum- 

 boldt, Ask Ccnir., t. i., pp. 120, 125. 



t Strabo, lib. i., p. 65. Casa^ib. Vide Humboldt, Examcn Crit., t, i., 

 p. 152. 



