Round Earth

“ Which is it more likely—that the earth, like a grain of sand at the centre of a mighty globe, should turn round once in twenty-four hours, or that the whole of that vast globe should complete a rotation in the opposite direction in the same time? ”

“ We all know the earth is round—I demonstrated that to my own satisfaction by travelling steadily west until I reached home—and so many persons have done likewise since the days of Sir Francis Drake, the first circumnavigator, that the rotundity of the earth is everywhere accepted and understood Now if the whole earth is round, it follows naturally that any part of it is curved in proportion to its extent. ”

“ The astronomers like to tell audiences of just what gases are burning in an unimaginably remote star, but have never reasonably made acceptable, for instance, that this earth is round, to start with. Of course I do not mean to say that this, or anything else, can be positively proved, but it is depressing to hear it said, so authoritatively, that the round shadow of this earth upon the moon proves that this earth is round, whereas records of angular shadows are common, and whereas, if this earth were a cube, its straight sides would cast a rounded shadow upon the convex moon. ”

“ The Earth a Globe, and it is necessarily demanded that it has a diurnal and an annual and various other motions; for a globular world without motion would be useless—day and night, winter and summer, the half year’s light and darkness at the “North Pole,” and other phenomena could not be explained by the supposition of rotundity without the assumption also of rapid and constant motion. Hence it is assumed that the Earth and Moon, and all the Planets [180] and their Satellites move in relation to each other, and that the whole move together in different planes round the Sun. ”

“ The flints in general form round or oval masses, but of irregular shape with many projections, and the masses lie in regular bands parallel to the stratification. The tremendous earth movement which has bent the strata into a great curve has compressed the vertical portion into about half its original thickness, and has made the chalk of our downs extremely hard. ”

“ We must picture to ourselves a fiery globe 3 yards in diameter to represent the sun, and the earth as a one-inch ball circling round that globe at a distance of about 325 yards, or about 350 paces. The diameter of the earth's orbit would on this scale, therefore, be somewhat more than a third of a mile. If we imagine the one-inch ball moving round the fiery globe once in a year, while turning on its axis once in a day, we find ourselves under a difficulty arising from the slowness of the resulting motions. ”

“ It has been shown that an easterly or a westerly motion is necessarily a circular course round the central North. The only north point or centre of motion of the heavenly bodies known to man is that formed by the North Star, which is over the central portion of the outstretched Earth. When, therefore, astronomers tell us of [15] a planet taking a westerly course round the Sun, the thing is as meaningless to them as it is to us, unless they make the Sun the northern centre of the motion, which they cannot do! ”

“ As the Earth turns round the line NCS, the whole Heavens MOLl seem to turn round the same line, but the contrary way. It is plain that this observer has the Poles constantly in his Horizon, and that his Horizon cuts the Diurnal paths of all the Celestial bodies perpendicularly and in halves. ”

“ Think, on the other hand, of a sphere extending through space to so vast a distance that every star in the Milky Way will be contained within its compass. Then the number of those corpuscles which would be required to fill that sphere is still far too small to represent the hugeness of the improbability that all the five hundred planetary bodies should revolve in the same direction, if chance, and chance alone, had guided the direction which each planet was to pursue in moving round its orbit. ”

“ Some sceptical and obstinate individuals may doubt that the Earth’s motion is visible, but I say from personal observation its a positive fact. I don’t care about latitude or longitude, or a vibratory pendulum revolving round the sine of a tangent on a spherical surface, nor axes, nor apsides, nor anything of the sort. ”

“ 'You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but for other planets as well as our earth. ”

“ It is admitted by William of Newburgh that his followers bewailed him bitterly as a martyr. Miracles were wrought with the chain that hanged him. The gibbet was carried off as a relic, and the very earth where it stood scooped away. Crowds were attracted to the scene of his death, and the primate had to station on the spot an armed guard to disperse them. ”

“ The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances. ”

“ Still, again, let us conceive of a sphere, but this time with a radius—not of ten millions of years of light’s flight, which would contain as many earths as drops in 1300 quintillions of such oceans, a number equalling more than half the drops in an ocean that contained 45 millions of cubic miles—but we will take less than ten minutes of light’s flight with a radius of 100 millions of miles, which is a little more than the distance from the earth to the sun. We find that this sphere would contain 15 trillions of earths ”

“ Thus we draw the important inference that if, the oceans having been removed, we were then to remove from the earth’s surface a rind two miles thick—a thickness which, it is to be observed, is only the two-thousandth part of the earth’s radius—we should transform the earth into a globe which, while it still retained appreciably the same size, would have such a temperature that even the coolest spot would be as hot as boiling water. ”

“ Here again it is well to remember the small size of the planet, from which we may infer that it has progressed through its physical evolution at a rate more rapid than would be possible with a larger globe like the earth. The sea is constantly wearing down the land, but by upheavals arising from the intensely heated condition of the interior of our globe the land is still able to maintain itself above water. ”

“ Here the science of geology takes its start with the metamorphic rocks, and it is the dividing line between the inner, smaller, and the outer, larger, planets.
IV. The Terraqueous Stage, when the surface has become substantially stable, there are great oceans gradually diminishing in size, and land gradually increasing. This is the stage of the sedimentary rocks, the time when the planet passes from its own supply of heat to dependence upon that of the sun; the stage when life begins, and the one in which the Earth is now. ”

“ Substances of the greatest specific gravity are susceptible of the greatest projectile force; and hence we find that mountains are composed of heavy masses of rock, mineral substances, and heavy earths; hills, or the next highest eminences, of earth of the next specific gravity; and plains, or level lands, of lighter substances. Had the earth originally been composed of one uniform substance, sand, for example, of equal fineness and weight, the whole surface of the globe would have presented one uniform level or unbroken plain. ”

“ But astronomy gives a different and more comfortable solution of the problem. The influence of the moon alone, it would appear, acting upon our planet, requires a thickness of crust of at least one thousand miles, to prevent the fabric of the globe from being severed into fragments. The earth, considered in connection with its own planetary system, has three distinct motions in space, a fact in science usually illustrated by the movements of the common spinning-top. ”

“ By laws, the origin of which we have not yet traced, the condition of the diffused heat was changed, and the particles of the gaseous matter, condensed and agglomerated by attraction, into a series of planets, of which our earth is the third in point of size. That the earth has undergone vast changes, is evident to the most superficial geological student. ”

“ Suppose, now, that 29,000,000 cold, solid globes, each of about the same mass as the moon, and amounting in all to a total mass equal to the sun’s, are scattered as uniformly as possible on a spherical surface of radius equal to one hundred times the radius of the earth’s orbit, and that they are left absolutely at rest in that position. ”

“ The great rivers of the earth, taken as a whole, transport sediment from the polar regions in an equatorial direction, and hence tend to increase the equatorial diameter, and at the same time, by their inequality of action, to a continual displacement of the centre of gravity, of the earth. The motion of the globe, and of all bodies affected by its attraction, is modified by every change of its form, and in this case we are not authorized to say that such effects are in any way compensated. ”

“ The globe turns upon its axis in twenty-four hours, and thus one can perceive, without any mental effort, the rotation of our planet, and the portions of the globe which come under the influence of the sun in rotation, just as they do actually on the earth. Not the least interesting attribute of this ingenious arrangement is the fact that during breakfast or dinner one can see the displacement and revolution of the earth with reference to the sun to all people in the world. ”

“ If therefore we conceive that there is no shift in all this great system of strata, we in reality are enabled, by means of it, to see no less than 61 miles into the interior of the earth, nearly a 65th part of the radius of the globe. ”

“ The deviation from a perfectly spherical shape is so inconsiderable that in an artificial globe of eighteen inches diameter it would hardly amount to the thickness of a sheet of paper; still, small as this is represented on a miniature scale, it has, doubtless, great importance on the great scale of a world like this, both in affecting somewhat the perturbation of other heavenly bodies which depend on the earth, as well as the perturbations in the earth’s own motion. ”

“ How great that pull is may be dimly gathered from the reflection that though the earth is spinning at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, nothing is ever shaken off. The oceans are not shaken off. They cling. But why is it that they are not equally distributed all over the face of the earth? If a map of the earth be examined, or still better a globe with the oceans and continents correctly drawn on it, it will be found that there is a great mass of land all lying grouped together on one side of the earth, and a great basin of waters on the other. ”

“ As we ascend, the Earth beneath us seems to recede—actually to sink away—while the horizon gradually and gracefully lifts a diversified slope stretching away farther and farther to a line that, at the highest elevation, seems to close with the sky. Thus upon a clear day, the æronaut feels as if suspended at about an equal distance between the vast blue oceanic concave above, and the equally expanded terrestrial basin below. ”

“ Now, the thing which is called a “proof” of the Earth’s roundness, and which is presented to children at school, is, that if we stand on [12] the sea-shore we may see the ships, as they approach us, absolutely “coming up,” and that, as we are able to see the highest parts of these ships first, it is because the lower parts are “behind the earth’s curve.” ”

“ And now a most curious effect of the smallness of the planet we were on began to play a conspicuous part in our adventures. Standing on a globe only five miles in diameter was like being on the summit of a mountain whose sides sloped rapidly off in every direction, disappearing in the black sky on all sides, as if it were some stupendous peak rising out of an unfathomable abyss. ”

“ The material crust of the earth rests on this placid sphere of vigor, excepting in a few places, where, as in the crevice we have entered, gaps, or crevices, in matter exist, beginning from near the outer surface and extending diagonally through the medial and inner spheres into the intra-earth space beyond. This medial sphere is a form of pure force, a disturbance of motion, and although without weight it induces, or conserves, gravity. It is invisible to mortal eyes, and is frictionless, but really is the bone of the earth. ”