xlii NOTES. 



Fah.) We have, therefore, from the highest summits of the Himalaya to the 

 lowest portions of the hasins which contain the fossil floras or vegetable 

 remains of an earlier state of the globe, a vertical distance of 45000 (or about 

 48000 Eng.) feet, or -^-5- of the earth's semi-diameter. 



( 126 j p. 154. Plato, Pluedo, p. 97 (Aristot. Metaph. p. 985). Compare 

 Hegel, Philosophic 4er Geschichte, 1840, S. 16. 



( 127 ) p. 155. Bessel, Allgemeine Betrachtungen fiber Gradmessungen nach 

 astronomisch-geodatischen Arbeiten, at the close of Bessel und Bacyer, Grad- 

 messuug in Ostpreussen, S. 427. Respecting the accumulation of matter on 

 the side of the moon which is turned towards the earth, see Laplace, Expos, 

 du Syst. du Monde, p. 308. 



P) p. 155. Plin. ii. 68 ; Seneca, Nat. Quscst. Prsef. c. ii. "El mundo 

 es poco" (the earth is small), said Columbus, in a ktter to Queen Isabella, 

 written from Jamaica, July 7, 1503 ; using the expression, however, rather 

 from his desire to shew that the passage from Spain is not long " when we 

 seek the east from the west." Compare my Examen crit. de 1'Hist. de la 

 Geogr. du 15 Siecle, T. i. p. 83, and T. ii. p. 32?T where I have shewn 

 that the opinion supported by Delisle, Freret, and Gosselin, of the extravagant 

 differences in the estimates of the circumference of the earth in Greek writers 

 being merely apparent, and caused by the different values of the stadia em- 

 ployed, had been put forward as early as 1495, by Jaime Ferrer, in a propo- 

 sition having for its object the determination of the papal line of demarcation. 



( 129 ) p. 155. Brewster, Life of Sir Isaac Newton, 1831, p. 162: "The 

 discovery of the spheroidal form of Jupiter, by Cassini, had probably directed 

 the attention of Newton to the determination of its cause, and consequently 

 to the investigation of the true figure of the earth." It is true that it was in 

 1691 that Cassini first announced the amount of the compression of Jupiter 

 (Jy) (Anciens Me'moircs de 1'Acad. des Sciences, T. ii. p. 108) ; but we 

 know, through Lalande (Astron. 3 me ed. T. iii. p. 335), that Maraldi was in 

 possession of some printed sheets of a Latin work on the spots of the planets, 

 commenced by Cassini, from which it appeared that he was acquainted with 

 the ellipticity of Jupiter even before 1666, or 21 years before the publication 

 of Newton's Principia. 



( 13 ) p. 157. Bessel's investigation of ten measurements of degrees, in 

 which the error discovered by Puissant in the calculation of the French arc 

 is taken into account, and allowed for (Schumacher, Astr. Nachr. 1841, 

 Nr. 438, S. 116), gives the semi-major axis of the elliptical spheroid of 

 revolution, which the irregular figure of the earth most nearly resembles, 



