There may be many who will consider the pendulum as undeserving so long a discussion; who do not know or remember that the telescope itself has hardly done more for the precision of astronomical observations than this simple instrument, not to mention the invaluable convenience of an uniform and accurate timekeeper in the daily intercourse of life. The patience and industry of modern observers are often the theme of well-merited praise, but we must look with a still higher degree of wonder on such men as Tycho Brahe and his contemporaries, who were driven by the want of any timekeeper on which they could depend to the most laborious expedients, and who nevertheless persevered to the best of their ability, undisgusted either by the tedium of such processes, or by the discouraging consciousness of the necessary imperfection of their most approved methods and instruments. The invariable regularity of the pendulum's motion was soon made subservient to ulterior purposes beyond that of merely registering time. We have seen the important assistance it afforded in establishing the laws of motion; and when the theory founded on those laws was extended and improved, the pendulum was again instrumental, by a species of approximate reasoning familiar to all who are acquainted with physical inquiries, in pointing out by its minute irregularities in different parts of the earth, a corresponding change in the weight of all bodies in those different situations, supposed to be the consequence of a greater distance from the axis of the earth's rotation; since that would occasion the force of attraction to be counterbalanced by an increased centrifugal force. The theory which kept pace with the constantly increasing accuracy of such observations, proving consistent in all trials of it, has left little room for future doubts; and in this manner the pendulum in intelligent hands became the simplest instrument for ascertaining the form of the globe which we inhabit. An English astronomer, who corresponded with Kepler under the signature of Brutius (whose real name perhaps might be Bruce), had already declared his belief in 1603, that "the earth on which we tread is neither round nor globular, but more nearly of an oval figure."[167] There is nothing to guide us to the grounds on which he formed this opinion, which was perhaps only a lucky guess. Kepler's note upon it is: "This is not altogether to be contemned."