FRENCH GEODESY. 271 



urements. Therefore without Geodesy we can have 

 no good map, and without a good map no great 

 pubHc works. 



These reasons would no doubt be sufficient to justify- 

 much expense, but they are reasons calculated to con- 

 vince practical men. It is not upon these that we 

 should insist here ; there are higher and, upon the 

 whole, more important reasons. 



We will therefore state the question differently : 

 Can Geodesy make us better acquainted with nature ? 

 Does it make us understand its unity and harmony ? 

 An isolated fact indeed is but of little worth, and the 

 conquests of science have a value only if they prepare 

 new ones. 



Accordingly, if we happened to discover a little 

 hump upon the terrestrial ellipsoid, this discovery 

 would be of no great interest in itself It would 

 become precious on the contrary if, in seeking for the 

 cause of the hump, we had the hope of penetrating 

 new secrets. 



So when Maupertuis and La Condamine in the 

 eighteenth century braved such diverse climates, it 

 was not only for the sake of knowing the shape of our 

 planet, it was a question of the system of the whole 

 World. If the Earth was flattened, Newton was 

 victorious, and with him the doctrine of gravitation 

 and the whole of the modern celestial mechanics. 

 And to-day, a century and a half since the victory 

 of the Newtonians, are we to suppose that Geodesy 

 has nothing more to teach us? We do not know 

 what there is in the interior of the globe. Mine 

 shafts and borings have given us some knowledge 

 of a stratum one or two miles deep — that is to say, 



