Excerpt from A New System of Modern Geography, or a Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar, and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World: Containing, I. The Figures, Motions, and Distances of the Planets, According to the Newtonian System and the Latest Observations, II. A General View of the Earth Considered as a Planet, With Several Useful Geographical Definitions and Problems

To form a conception of thefe two motions of the earth, we may imagine a~ball moving on a bowling-green the ball proceeds forwards upon the green, not by ¿id ing along like a plane upon wood, or a [late upon ice, but by turning round its own axis, which is an imaginary line drawn through the centre Of the ball, and ending 611 its furface in two points called its poles. Conceiving the matter then in this way and that the earth, in the fpace of 24 hours, moves from weft to eat, the inhabitants on the furface, like men on the deck ofa lhip, who are infenfible of their own motion, and think that theibanks move from them in a contrary direction, will conceive that the fun and liars move from call to weft in the fame time, in which they, with the ea~r1h, move from weft to eaft. This diurnal motion of the earth being once clearly conceived, will enable us to form a notion of its annual motion round the fun for as that luminary feems to have a daily motion round our earth, which is really_occa. Fioned by the daily motion of the earth round its axis, fo, in the courfe ofa year, he feems to have an annual motion in the heavens, and to rife and let in different points of them, which is really occafioned by the daily motion of the earth in its orbit or path round the fun, which it completes in a year. Now as to the firll' of theic mo tions we owe the difference of day and night, {0 to the fecond we are indebted for the difi'erence in the length of the days and nights, and in the feafons of the year.

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