﻿INTRODUCTION. 



Time was, they said the Earth was flat; but now they say it's round! 

 But strange enough, though true, it is, no PROOF has yet been found. 

 Astronomers will tell you, if you ask them, o'er and o'er, 

 Proofs are by no means wanting, by the dozen or the score. 

 Copernicus has told us this, and Newton, and the rest : 

 And people say ' These are the men who, surely, should know best!' 

 Herschel, indeed, says, in his book, ' We'll take it all for granted; 1 

 But "COMMON SENSE" says, now-a-days. that something else is 



wanted. 

 Glaisher the bold, we have been told, has been far above the ground ; 

 But bold enough are we to say that proofs he ne'er has found. 

 And if 't be true the Earth 's a globe, who better off than he 

 To say, when looking down upon 't, The globe I plainly see !' 

 But, has he said so ? No, not he : he knows his duty better 

 Than to utter such a falsehood, in the spirit or the letter. 

 When we take his Oorrespondence and his other publications, 

 We can find no mention of a globe in all his " Observations I*" 

 And here 't is well to notice, that, if the Earth 's a plane, 

 To all who view it from above, 't is concave, in the main, 

 As though it were a wassail bowl, so large and yet so true, 

 The horizon for its edges, and its depths all tinged with blue. 

 Thus we find that terra firma, if we take it as it looks, 

 Is very far from being as 't is shown to us in Boohs : 

 For in them is nothing that would seem, if look'd at, like a cup, 

 But a circle, with a man on it, and a ship, perhaps, sailing up ! 

 A globe this is to represent, having bottom, sides, and top, 

 And people all around it, there, by some means, made to stop / 

 And, all the while, 't is spinning on its axis, like a toy ! 

 At least, such is the theory : and it 's taught to girl and boy. 

 Six hundred miles an hour, at London, is the rate it 's going, 

 Heedless alike of thunder's roar, or winds that may be blowing. 

 Professor Airy, in his Lectures, says, ' young men,' " Do you believe it?' 

 We answer, 'No!' and tell him, he himself need not conceive it. 

 But this rotation is as naught compared with what we 're told 

 Of its revolution in its orbit round the Sun so bright and bold : 



