Columbus admirably demonstrated, from an artificial globe, that flies walked as easily on the lower as on the upper surface, and hence pointed out that men, compared with the size of the earth, are much smaller still than flies. But his judges persisted in their conviction, and did not fail to cast in his face the jesting words of Plutarch: "Philosophers, rather than renounce a favourite hypothesis, would make human beings crawl on the lower face of the earth like worms or lizards." But it was principally the authority of St Augustine which they invoked to condemn a belief in the Antipodes. St Augustine had declared such a belief incompatible with the dogmas of the faith; for to admit the existence of inhabitable lands, in the opposite hemisphere, would be to admit the existence of peoples not descended from Adam, since it would have been impossible for him to traverse the ocean lying between Asia and the Antipodes! * * * * * Some authorities denied the Antipodes on the ground taken by certain classic writers, that the regions of the opposite hemisphere were uninhabitable under the tropics, on account of the extreme heat, and near the Poles, on account of the extreme cold. Others cited Epicurus, affirming that the earth was inhabitable and roofed with a celestial vault only in our western hemisphere, the other half being an inaccessible chaos. Others pretended that no traveller could reach the east by way of the west, because the earth, being pear-shaped, he would encounter on his road an insurmountable tuberosity,--undoubtedly the tail or stalk of the pear! Finally, there were some who dwelt upon the magnitude of the earth, whose circuit would occupy a voyage of upwards of three years. It was to this objection, as the most serious, that Columbus principally addressed his reply. And he replied by discovering the New World. But had not this daring genius been supported in his projects by the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, he would have been handed over to the Inquisition, and condemned as a heretic. It was then so dangerous to believe in the Antipodes, that a Bishop of Salzburg was deposed from his episcopal throne, and deprived of his ecclesiastical dignity, by the Pope Zacharias, for having countenanced the heresy. We now know why, for a whole series of centuries, men would not follow in the footsteps of Aristotle, who was the first to establish theoretically the sphericity of the earth. The discovery of the New World, and the voyages of circumnavigation which rapidly succeeded one another, demonstrated, not only that inhabitants there are whose feet are opposite to ours, but that the earth does not rest upon any species of support; that it floats, like a star, freely in space. The ice was broken. The question of the earth's figure was revived, and, this time, discussed in a new light. _Is the earth perfectly round?_