This method of
treating scientific subjects led the most illustrious of our poets* to
exclaim with impatience, "The Germans have the art of making science
inaccessible." An edifice can not produce a striking effect until the
scaffolding is removed, that had of necessity been used during its erection.
[Footnote] *Gothe, in 'Die Aphorismen uber Naturwissenschaft', bd. I., s.
155 ('Werke kleine Ausgabe','von' 1833.)
Thus the uniformity of figure observed in the distribution of continental
masses, which all terminate toward the south in a pyramidal form, and expand
toward the north (a law that determines the nature of climates, the
direction of currents in the ocean and the atmosphere, and the transition of
certain types of tropical vegetation toward the southern temperate zone),
may be clearly apprehended without any knowledge of the geodesical and
astronomical operations by means of which these pyramidal forms of
continents have been determined. In like manner, physical geography teaches
us by how many leagues
p 48
the equatorial axis exceeds the polar axis of the globe, and shows us the
mean equality of the flattening of the two hemispheres, without entailing on
us the necessity of giving the detail of the measurement of the degrees in
the meridian, or the observations on the pendulum, which have led us to know
that the true figure of our globe is not exactly that of a regular ellipsoid
of revolution, and that this irregularity is reflected in the corresponding
irregularity of the movements of the moon.
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