is--Is _this_ dog {88} a dog?" And
this question would arise upon every dog of them all.

ZETETIC ASTRONOMY.

Zetetic Astronomy: Earth not a globe. 1857 (Broadsheet).

Though only a traveling lecturer's advertisement, there are so many
arguments and quotations that it is a little pamphlet. The lecturer gained
great praise from provincial newspapers for his ingenuity in proving that
the earth is a flat, surrounded by ice. Some of the journals rather incline
to the view: but the _Leicester Advertiser_ thinks that the statements
"would seem very seriously to invalidate some of the most important
conclusions of modern astronomy," while the _Norfolk Herald_ is clear that
"there must be a great error on one side or the other." This broadsheet is
printed at Aylesbury in 1857, and the lecturer calls himself _Parallax_:
but at Trowbridge, in 1849, he was S. Goulden.[183] In this last
advertisement is the following announcement: "A paper on the above subjects
was read before the Council and Members of the Royal Astronomical Society,
Somerset House, Strand, London (Sir John F. W. Herschel,[184] President),
Friday, Dec. 8, 1848." No account of such a paper appears in the _Notice_
for that month: I suspect that the above is Mr. S. Goulden's way of
representing the following occurrence: Dec. 8, 1848, the Secretary of the
Astronomical Society (De Morgan by name) said, at the close of the
proceedings,--"Now, gentlemen, if you will promise not to tell the Council,
I will read something for your amusement": and he then read a few of the
arguments which had been transmitted by the lecturer. The fact is worth
noting that from 1849 to 1857, arguments on the roundness or flatness of
the earth did itinerate. I have {89} no doubt they did much good: for very
few persons have any distinct idea of the evidence for the rotundity of the
earth. The _Blackburn Standard_ and _Preston Guardian_ (Dec. 12 and 16,
1849) unite in stating that the lecturer ran away from his second lecture
at Burnley, having been rather too hard pressed at the end of his first
lecture to explain why the large hull of a ship disappeared before the
sails. The persons present and waiting for the second lecture assuaged
their disappointment by concluding that the lecturer had slipped off the
icy edge of his flat disk, and that he would not be seen again till he
peeped up on the opposite side.

But, strange as it may appear, the opposer of the earth's roundness has
mo