Page 31 of 376
things to Europe. [p. 25] No one has ever seen it in its entirety. The earth's shadow is much larger than the moon. If the periphery of the shadow is curved--but the convex moon--a straight-edged object will cast a curved shadow upon a surface that is convex. All the other so-called proofs may be taken up in the same way. It was impossible for Columbus to prove that the earth is round. It was not required: only that with a higher seeming of positiveness than that of his opponents, he should attempt. The thing to do, in 1492, was nevertheless to accept that beyond Europe, to the west, were other lands. | offer for acceptance, as something concordant with the spirit of this first quarter of the 10th century, the expression that beyond this earth are--other lands--from which come things as, from America, float As to yellow substances that have fallen upon this earth, the endeavor to exclude extra-mundane origins is the dogma that all yellow rains and yellow snows are colored with pollen from this earth's pine trees. Symons' Meteorological Magazine is especially prudish in this respect and regards as highly improper all advances made by other explainers. Nevertheless, the Monthly Weather Review, May, 1877, reports a golden-yellow fall, of Feb. 27, 1877, at Peckloh, Germany, in which four kinds of organisms, not pollen, were the coloring matter. There were minute things shaped like arrows, coffee beans, horns, and disks. They may have been symbols. They may have been objective hieroglyphics-- Mere passing fancy--let it go-- In the Annales de Chimie, 85-288, there is a list of rains said to have contained sulphur. | have thirty or forty other notes. I'll not use one of them. I'll admit that every one of them is upon a fall of pollen. | said,