FRENCH GEODESY. 273 



are always courteous, or, at least, almost always. In 

 any case they are necessary, because they are always 

 fruitful. 



Well, in these enterprises that demand such long 

 efforts and so many collaborators, the individual is 

 effaced, in spite of himself of course. None has the 

 right to say, this is my work. So the rivalry is not 

 between individuals, but between nations. Thus we 

 are led to ask what share France has taken in the 

 work, and I think we have a right to be proud of 

 what she has done. 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century there 

 arose long discussions between the Newtonians, who 

 believed the Earth to be flattened as the theory of 

 gravitation demands, and Cassini, who was misled by 

 inaccurate measurements, and believed the globe to 

 be elongated. Direct observation alone could settle 

 the question. It was the French Academy of Sciences 

 that undertook this task, a gigantic one for that 

 period. 



While Maupertuis and Clairaut were measuring a 

 degree of longitude within the Arctic circle, Bouguer 

 and La Condamine turned their faces towards the 

 mountains of the Andes, in regions that were then 

 subject to Spain, and to-day form the Republic of 

 Ecuador. Our emissaries were exposed to great 

 fatigues, for journeys then were not so easy as they 

 are to-day. 



It is true that the country in which Maupertuis' 

 operations were conducted was not a desert, and it is 

 even said that he enjoyed among the Lapps those soft 

 creature comforts that are unknown to the true Arctic 

 navigator. It was more or less in the neighbourhood 



