THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH. 31 



very frequently been made from the earliest times of astro- 

 nomical inquiry between tins swelling or convex elevation 

 of the earth's surface and carefully measured mountain 

 masses, I will select as objects of comparison the highest of 

 the known peaks of the Himalayas, namely, that of Kin- 

 tsehindjinga, which was fixed by Colonel Waugh at 28,174 

 feet, and that portion of the elevated plateau of Thibet which 

 is nearest to the sacred lakes of Rakas-Tal and Manassa- 

 rova, and which, according to Lieutenant Henry Strachey, 

 is situated at the mean height of 15,347 feet. The bulging 

 of our planet at the equatorial zone is, therefore, not quite 



kurd's admirable translation, " that the earth, together with the sea, is 

 spherical, the two constituting one and the same surface. The projec- 

 tion of the land, which is inconsiderable and may remain unnoticed, is 

 lost in such magnitudes, so that in these cases we are unable to determ- 

 ine its spherical form with the same accuracy as in the case of a sphere 

 made by a turning-lathe, or as well as the sculptor, who judges from 

 his conceptions of form, for here we are obliged to determine by phys- 

 ical and less delicate perception." (Strabo, ii., p. 112.) " The world 

 is at once a work of nature and of providence — a work of nature, inas- 

 much as all things tend toward one point, the centre of the whole, round 

 which they group themselves, the less dense element (water) containing 

 the denser (earth)." (Strabo, xvii., p. 809.) Wherever we find the fig- 

 ure of the earth described by the Greeks, it is compared (Cleom., Ci/cL 

 Theor., i., 8, p. 51) with a flat or centrally depressed disk, a cylinder 

 (Anaximander), a cube or pyramid ; and, lastly, we find it generally held 

 to be a sphere, notwithstanding the long contest of the Epicureans, who 

 denied the tendency of attraction toward the centre. The idea of com- 

 pression does not seem to have presented itself to their imagination. 

 The elongated earth of Democritus was only the disk of Thales length- 

 ened in one direction. The drum-like form, to axvp-a rv/uTcavoeidic;, 

 which seems more' especially to have emanated from Leucippus (Plut., 

 De Plac.Philos., iii.,10; Galen. Hist. Phil, cap. 21 ; Aristotle, De Cazlo, 

 ii., 13, p. 293 Bekker), appears to have been founded upon the idea of 

 a hemisphere with a flat basis, which probably represented the equator, 

 while the curvature was regarded as the oIkov[X£vt]. A passage in Pliny, 

 regarding Pearls (xi., 51), elucidates this form, while Aristotle merely 

 compares the segments of the sphere with the drum (MeteoroZ., ii., 5, 

 a 10, Ideler, t. i., p. 563), as we also find from the commentary of 

 Olympiodorus (Ideler, t. i., p. 301). I have here purposely avoided re- 

 ferring to two passages, which are well known to me, in Agathemerus 

 (De Geographia, lib. i., cap. 1, p. 2, Hudson), andinEusebius(£"ya?2^e/. 

 Prceparat., t. iv., p. 125, ed. Gaisford, 1813), because they prove witli 

 what inaccuracy later writers have often ascribed to the ancients views 

 which were totally foreign to them. According to these versions, 

 " Eudoxus gave for the length and breadth of the earth's disk values 

 which stood in relation to one another as 1 to 2 ; the same is said in 

 reference to Dica^archus, the pupil of Aristotle, who, however, advanced 

 his own special proofs of the spherical form of the earth (Marcian, Ca- 

 pella, lib. vi., p. 192). Hipparchus regarded the earth as TpaTtefyeidTJc, 

 and Thales held it to be a sphere !" 



