form of a magic table-cloth, which sometimes spread 

 before him an abundant feast of good things, at other 

 times lay in the bare hard folds of Famine, but yielded 

 him no clue to the nature of its own existence or its 

 -claims upon the creatures living on it. 



That our earth is a globe is an idea which was un- 

 known to men in ancient times. Our Bible in revealing 

 the mysteries of creation, says not a word abouttheir 

 form, and only, as it were, briefly hints that all the hea- 

 venly hosts in the starry sky are mere auxiliaries of our 

 own earth. 



With the development of the inquisitive human intel- 

 lect, with the increase of human knowledge, men began 

 to interest themselves more and more in the world 

 beyond the clouds, and there is no doubt but that the 

 conception of earth as a globular body was familiar to 

 the ancient Egyptians. We find the first beginnings of 

 astronomical observation in Egypt of old, but as the 

 views of those early times never went beyond direct 

 'human interests the, science of those days, worked in the 

 same narrow- groove, and all the natural phenomena of 

 the heavens were applied as political signs and warn- 

 ings, being sometimes referred to the actions and de- 

 stinies even of individual potentates. 



Thr earth as a globular body entered on the scene in 

 the middle ages of the Christian epoch, and, little by 

 Jittle, a conviction of the spherical form of our planet 

 forced its way into the mind of man. Columbus was the 

 iirst who decided to put to the test this scientific con- 

 fiction, and he set out with a handful of companions 

 to the West with the assurance in his own mind that 

 lie would return home from the East. Men of science 

 by their travels, and discoveries have dispelled all doubts 

 as to the fact that our earth is a sphere similar in 

 form to other heavenly bodies, and astronomy, since the 

 -confirmation of this fact, has occupied itself with the 

 study of the earth's orbit, and with determination of its 

 relative position amongst other planets and its relation 



