The astronomer Picard attempted it again under Louis XIV. by triangulation.
The French astronomers have always been forward in this inquiry, and to them we owe the systematic attempts to arrive at a truer knowledge of the length of an arc of the meridian which were made in 1735-45 in Lapland and in Peru; and later under Mechain and Delambre, by order of the National Assembly, for the basis of the metrical system.
Observations of this kind have also been made by the English, as at Lough Foyle in Ireland, and in India.
The review which has here been made of the various ideas on what now seems so simple a matter cannot but impress us with the vast contrast there is between the wild attempts of the earlier philosophers and our modern affirmations. What progress has been made in the last two thousand years! And all of this is due to hard work. The true revelation of nature is that which we form ourselves, by our persevering efforts. We now know that the earth is approximately spherical, but flattened by about 1/300 at the poles, is three-quarters covered with water, and enveloped everywhere by a light atmospheric mantle. The distance from the centre of the earth to its surface is 3,956 miles, its area is 197 million square miles, its volume is 256,000 millions of cubic miles, its weight is six thousand trillion tons. So, thanks to the bold measurements of its inhabitants, we know as much about it as we are likely to know for a long time to come.
CHAPTER XI.
LEGENDARY WORLDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
The legends that were for so many ages prevalent in Europe had their foundation in the attempt to make the accounts of Scripture and the ideas and dogmas of the Fathers of the Church fit into the few and insignificant facts that were known with respect to the earth, and the system of which it forms a part, and the far more numerous imaginations that were entertained about it.
We are therefore led on to examine some of these legends, that we may appreciate how far a knowledge of astronomy will effect the eradication of errors and fantasies which, under the aspect of truth, have so long enslaved the people. No doubt the authors of the legendary stories knew well enough their allegorical nature; but those who received them supposed that they gave true indications of the nature of the earth and world, and therefore accepted them as facts.