SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
71 
masses by rather large openings, or by narrow passages thus forming inland seas or 
mediterraneans ; gulfs, on the other hand, open widely towards the sea. These sub- 
divisions were accepted by several hydrographers of his time. 
The famous French hydrographer, C. F. Claret de Fleurieu, 1 in 17G9, made, at the 
request of the Academie des Sciences, a voyage for the trial of the chronometers of 
Berthoud and Leroy. This voyage, and the one undertaken with the same object in 
1771-1772 by Borda, de Verdun, and Pingre, are not only of importance from having 
improved the methods of determining longitudes at sea, but also from the considerable Improvement in 
improvement effected in the charts of the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea, which till then Methods of 
r . , DETERMINING 
were very imperfect. The construction of the quadrant by Hadley, of the sextant by Positions at Sea. 
Doilond, the measurement of an arc of the meridian in South America, the appointment 
of a board of longitude, the conception of the nautical almanac, and the formation of a 
surveying branch of the naval service, all belong to the same period. 
Fleurieu wrote the introduction to Marchand’s voyage, 2 and drew up along with 
Louis XVI. the instructions for La Perouse's voyage. The cruise of Marchand in 
1791 along the north-west coast of America, though undertaken in a purely 
commercial spirit, added a few new facts to the knowledge of the archipelagoes in the 
Pacific Ocean, and materially improved the map of the Marquesas Islands ; but the 
greatest interest of the narrative lies in Fleurieu’s introduction, containing his views on Nomenclature 
hydrography. Fleurieu had two objects : — “ My first aim,” he says, “ has been to bring ^ ^ecuufu^ 
back hydrographic divisions of the seas to natural principles, and to reform the erroneous 
qualifications and denominations given to them. My second object will be to rectify the 
hydrographic nomenclature, and to give each portion of the sea-border, in both continents, 
such names as are best suited to them.” The earth is considered by the French hydro- 
grapher as formed of two continental masses and a universal sea. “ The Ocean is one, 
it i3 infinite, its waters surround our planet from one pole to the other, and are equalised 
over the whole surface of the ocean.” The two terrestrial continental masses advance 
into the ocean so as to divide the latter into two vast regions of unequal surface : the 
Atlantic Ocean between the western coasts of the Old World and the eastern coast of 
America, and the second ocean considerably larger, extending between the west coast of 
the New World and the east coast of the Old. He looks upon the Malay Archipelago 
and the great Australian lands as the remains of a terrestrial mass, once united to 
the south of Asia, which the mighty ocean ruptured. The Indian Ocean is included 
in his Great Ocean. He recognises besides a frozen Arctic Sea and an Antarctic Sea 
limited, as in most modern maps, by the polar circles. He placed the limits 
1 Fleurieu, Voyage fait par ordre du Roi pour eprouver en mer ies horloges, Paris 1783. 
2 Voyage autour du Monde par E. Marchand, precede par les observations sur la division hydrograpliiqu du globe, 
et ebangements proposes dans la nomenclature generate et particuli&re de l’hydrographie, par Cl. Fleurieu, tom. iv. pp. 
1-74, Paris l’an viii. 
