" Compare my 'Examen
Crit. de l'Hist. de la Geogr. du 15 me Siecle', t.i., p. 83, and t. ii., p.
327, where I have shown that the opinion maintained by Delisle, Freret, and
Gosselin, that the excessive differences in the statements regarding the
Earth's circumference, found in the writings of the Greeks, are only
apparent, and dependent on different values being attached to the stadia,
was put forward as early as 1495 by Jaime Ferrer, in a proposition regarding
the determination of the line of demarkation of the papal dominions.
If these measurements do not always accord in the curvatures of different
meridians under the same degree of latitude, this very circumstance speaks
in favor of the exactness of the instruments and the methods employed, and
of the accuracy and the fidelity to nature of these partial results. The
conclusion to be drawn from the increase of forces of attraction (in the
direction from the equator to the poles) with respect to the figure of a
planet is dependent on the distribution of density in its interior. Newton,
from theoretical principles, and perhaps likewise prompted by Cassini's
discovery, previously to 1666, of the compression of Jupiter,* determined,
in his immortal work, 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia', that the
compression of the Earth, as a homogeneous mass, was 1/230th.
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