live in, is, by the report of modern travellers, no bad country upon the whole; and on the banks of the Jenifka, is rich and fertile *. The irruption of the northern nations into the warmer and richer countries of Europe, was moft probably owing to the poverty of the parts they came from; and their infufficiency to fuftain any confiderable increase of people: Whereas I do not know whether it will be too much to fay, that the most barren of those countries now fupport, in eafe and plenty, ten times the number of thofe that then were ftarving upon them †. I intimated, that the very form of the earth contributed fomething towards the improvement and fertility of it. As the circumvolution of the earth on its axis seems to have been the means of reducing it into form; fo it may continue to have the fame effect, in rounding and smoothing the surface of it; and in bring *See Bell's Travels. + See Hume, ib. p. 248. ope ing it to the form of an oblate fpheroid; of which form it hath lately been de monftrated to be; and by which means, I conceive it must neceffarily have affumed this form: The nature of the motion* rating upon the thing moved, to affimi late it to itself, fo as to be the better adapted to receive that motion: Though poffibly it may not yet be brought to the form of a perfect fpheroid. The inequalities of its furface demonftrate it not to be strictly fucht. But its constant_rota tion Sir I. N. affirmed the earth to be an oblate spheroid; and the French Mathematicians, by menfuration, proved it fo to be. + It may not be amiss here to state the proportion, which the inequalities, caused by the mountains, in the furface of the earth, bear to the whole bulk of the globe. The mountains of Peru, the higheft in the world, are about 3000 fathoms in height, from the furface of the fea. The diameter of the earth is 3000 leagues: The proportion therefore, which the one bears to the other, is that of a fathom to a league; or one foot to 2200 feet. So that though the enormous height of the mountains, and unfagulfs of the ocean, make fuch E e thomable depths and arduous tion feems to be conftantly rounding off the extremities of these inequalities; and the very impinging of them against the atmosphere may contribute fomething to this end; by which means it will become more and more fpheroidical, smooth, and level. : We want not intimations in fcripture concerning this form of the earth. He hath compassed the waters with bounds, faith Job*. He fet a compass on the face of the depth. It is he that fitteth upon the circle of the earth. The arduous up's and down's, and are fo horribly rugged in appearance, to us, and indeed in themselves likewife; yet, in comparifon with the whole volume and bulk of the globe, they are really fo trifling and inconfiderable, that they are scarce worth being brought into estimation; and are to be counted but as the small duft of the balance. To the earth's femidiameter, they are but as duft upon our common globe. *Job xxvi. 10. + Prov. viii. 27. . † Ifai. xl. 22. I do not mention, what we read in the Pfalms of the round world, as any authority: For I quef The antients, Jews as well as heathens; had but very imperfect and confufed ideas of the form of the earth. They at first fuppofed it to be flat, and round like a dish; having the ocean for its horizon, beyond which they could not conceive there was any terra firma. And that the heavens and the earth above this ocean was the whole vifible universe; and that all beneath it was Hades, or the invifible world. Some imagined it resembled a drum, or oblong cylinder. Others got into the notion of its being fpherical. And this continued to be the prevailing opinion, till the last age; when it was called in queftion, and the form of the earth was fuppofed to be elliptical, or fpheroidical. But here again I question whether the idea of rotundity is implied in the original, as was intimated above, p. 94. an, which we fo tranflate, I apprehend is a general term, fignifying the terraqueous globe, in contra-diftinction to, which is restrained in its fignification, to that of dry land. Thus they are diftinguished, Pf. xc. 2. bani 8, The earth, and the world. the learned were divided; fome fuppofing the axis, on which it turned, to be its greatest diameter; and the meridians to be so many true ellipfes; while others fufpected the contrary. The notion even of the spherical figure of the earth, though it obtained early, was but flowly come into. The rife of the doctrine of antipodes fhews when they began to get over their prejudices against it. The first hint that I remember to have read of them, is in Cicero; who, in defcribing them, fays, Adverfa nobis urgent veftigia' And Seneca, the tragedian, hath a remark able paffage to the fame purpose Te licet terra ultimo Summota mundo dirimat oceani plagis; t But the existence of antipodes was still no more than conjecture, and was looked up *Somn. Scipionis. Hyppolytus, A&. iii, Scen. 3. |