GEODETIC CONSIDERATIONS 



71 



(plate 9, figures 1 and 2, page 67) and shaded the Archean areas and 

 marked in lines the Archean-Paleozoic tablelands. The coincidences 

 and discrepancies are both strongly marked 



GEODETIC CONSIDEBA TIONS 



No objection can be raised to the proposed hypothesis from the sphe- 

 roidal form of the earth, for the earth is not only flattened at the poles 

 but flattened at the equator, and pendulum observations show it is drawn 

 out at the south pole like a top, as our hypothesis would demand, or like 

 a flattened top — like a potato, Professor Darwin has suggested. Her- 

 schel said, Ct The earth is earth-shaped."* It is safe to call it a geoid. 



Figure 5. — Map showing Variations in the Attraction of Gravity. 



Numbers 0-5 indicate number of millimeters to be added to the pendulum beating seconds at the 

 equator to make it beat seconds at different latitudes. 



It is so irregular that in one of the most refined series of astronomical 

 measurements undertaken by the Koniglich-Kaiserliche topographische 

 Militar-Institut zu Wien,the longitude Vienna-Milan and Vienna-Brescia- 

 Milan did not agree, although corrections were made for the quinine 

 taken by the observers when working through marshes. 



La Caille in 1751 measured the length of a degree at the south pole 

 and found a curvature differing from that in corresponding latitudes in 

 the northern hemisphere, and his results were confirmed and extended 

 by Maclear. 



A pendulum swings more rapidly the nearer it is to the center of the 



♦ Gregory, loc. cit. p. 342. 



