LARGE AND SMALL DEDUCTIONS. 17 



that " the spectator of the starry vault may see, every moment, 

 new stars rising above the horizon, may see them mount 

 the sky, halt in their upward march when they have attained 

 a certain elevation, afterwards re-descend, and pass below the 

 horizon;" to hear, we say, these words incessantly reproduced, 

 one would think that a cursory glance at the sky would suffice 

 to reveal the general movement, and that what is within the 

 ken of the first comer, should not be called a discovery. 



But we see in this another of those illusions which blind 

 contemporaries as to the time-long efforts of their predecessors 

 to discover the very results which long ago became our com- 

 mon patrimony. Unquestionably, if you have eyes, you can- 

 not fail to see the apparent movement of the earth and moon ; 

 but from thence to the relation of the whole celestial sphere 

 is a wide interval. How many men are there who possess, on 

 the one hand, sufficient patience to fix their gaze only for a 

 couple of hours on the same point of the starry firmament ; 

 and, on the other, sufficient intelligence to estimate the 

 relation of this point to a fixed point of the horizon, and to 

 measure, by the thought, the interval separating these two 

 points ? Let each one ask himself. 



DETERMINATION OF THE CARDINAL POINTS. 

 However it may be, the discovery of the rotation of the 

 celestial system must have been rapidly brought to perfection 

 as it was transmitted from one generation to another. It must 

 soon have been recognised that this sphere is inclined in such 

 a manner that one of its poles the poles of the world, which, in 



