CONTRAST

ZETETIC COSMOGONY:
OR
Conclusive Evidence
THAT THE WORLD IS NOT A
ROTATING—REVOLVING—GLOBE,
BUT
A STATIONARY PLANE CIRCLE.
By Thomas Winship
1899

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(Post 4/47)

CONTRAST.

If the earth be the globe of popular belief, the same amount of heat and cold, summer and winter, should be experienced at the same latitudes North and South of the Equator. The same number of plants and animals would be found, and the same general conditions exist. That the very opposite is the case, disproves the globular assumption. The Great Contrasts between places at the same latitudes North and South of the Equator, is a strong argument against the received doctrine of the rotundity of the earth.

From The Geological Journal for November, 1893, I extract the following:

"A Voyage towards the Antarctic Sea," report by Wm. S. Bruce, "On January 12th, 1893, we saw what appeared to be high mountainous land and glaciers stretching from about 64°.10 west to about 65°.30 south, 58° west; this, I believe, may have been the eastern coast of Graham's Land, which has never before been seen. But it would be unwise to be too certain, for it must have been 60 miles distant."

"METEOROLOGY.—Periods of fine calm weather alternate with very severe gales, usually accompanied by fog and snow, the barometer never attained 30 inches. The records of air temperature are very remarkable; our lowest temperature was 20°.8 Fahr., our highest 37°.6 Fahr. only a difference of 16°.8 Fahr. in the total range for a period extending slightly over two months. Compare this with our climate; where in a single day and night you may get a variation of more than twice that amount. The average temperatures show a still more remarkable uniformity."

"December averaged 31°.14 Fahr. for one hundred and fifteen readings; January 31°.10 Fahr. for one hundred and ninety-eight readings; February 29°.65 for one hundred and sixteen, a range of less than 1½° Fahr."

"This I consider to be very significant, and worthy of special attention by future Antarctic explorers, for may it not indicate a similar uniformity of temperature throughout the year. Antarctic cold has been much dreaded by some; the four hundred and twenty-nine readings I took during December, January, and February show an average temperature of only 30°.76 Fahr.; this being in the very height of summer in latitudes corresponding to the Faroe Islands in the north, but I believe the temperature of winter will not vary very much from that of summer. This uniformity of temperature partly accounts for the great accumulation of ice which is formed not on account of the great severity of the winter, but because there is practically no summer to melt it."

"Mr. Seebohm has vividly pictured the onrush of summer in the Arctic; but how different in the Antarctic. There, there is eternal winter, and snow never melts. As far north as a man has travelled he has found reindeer and hare basking in the sun, and country brilliant with rich flora; within the Antarctic circle no plant is to be found."

REPORT BY C. W. DONALD, M.B., C.M.

"On the passage out, we, on board the Active, touched at the beautiful island of Madeira, in October, and two more months landed us in the barren Falkland Islands. Sailing thence on December 11th, we crossed the stormy waters to the east of Cape Horn, and saw our first iceberg on December 18th. On the same day we sighted Clarence Island—one of the South Shetlands. These are called after our own Northern Shetlands, and the part sighted by us lies only some 60 miles nearer the pole. But what a difference between the two places. Our own Shetlands bright with ladies' dresses in light summer garments, and carrying tennis racquets and parasols; the South Shetlands, even in the height of summer, clad in an almost complete covering of snow, only a steep cliff or bold rock standing out in deep contrast here and there, the only inhabitants being birds or seals; and even the bird life, with the exception of the penguins, is scanty. Sir James Ross, on his third voyage, entered the ice at nearly the same spot, and, fifty years before—all but a week—had sheltered from a westerly gale under the inhospitable shores of Clarence Island. Its highest point stands 4,557 feet above sea level." 

The following from "Polar Explorations," read before the Royal Dublin Society, is taken from "Zetetic Astronomy," by "Parallax:"    

 "On the South Georgias, in the same latitude as Yorkshire in the North, Cook did not find a shrub big enough to make a toothpick. Captain Cook describes it as 'savage and horrible.' The wild rocks raised their lofty summits till they were lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay covered with everlasting snow. Not a tree was to be seen; not a shrub even big enough to make a toothpick. Who could have thought that an island of no greater extent than this (Isle of Georgia), situated between the latitude of 54 and 55 degrees, should in the very height of summer, be in a manner wholly covered many fathoms deep with frozen snow? The lands which lie to the south are doomed by nature to perpetual frigidness—never to feel the warmth of the sun's rays; whose horrible and savage aspect I have not words to describe. The South Shetlands, occupying a corresponding latitude to their namesakes in the north, present scarcely a vestige of vegetation. Kerguelen, as low as latitude 50 degrees south, boasts 13 species of plants, of which only one, a peculiar kind of cabbage, has been found useful in cases of scurvy; while Iceland, 15 degrees nearer to the pole in the north, boasts 870 species. Even marine life is sparse in certain tracts of vast extent, and the sea bird is seldom observed flying over such wastes. The contrasts between the limits of organic life in Arctic and Antarctic zones is very remarkable and significant. Vegetables and land animals are found at nearly 80 degrees in the north; while, from the parallel of 58 degrees in the south, the lichen, and such-like plants only, clothe the rocks, and seabirds and the cretaceous tribes alone are seen upon the desolate beaches." "McLintock describes herds of reindeer—a perfect forest of antlers—moving north in the summer . . . . . . . . the eider duck and the brent goose through the air; the unwieldly family of the cetacea through the waters; the Arctic bear upon the ice; the musk ox and reindeer along the land—all wend their way northward at certain seasons . . . . . . . Now these indications are absent from the southern zone, as is also the inhabitation of man. The bones of musk oxen, killed by the Esquimaux, were found north of the 79th parallel; while in the south, man is not found above the 56th parallel of latitude."    

This is supported by the following from the Western Christian Advocate, of 10th February, 1897, copied from Appleton's Science Monthly:    

"The distinctiveness of the Antarctic climate as compared with the Arctic is found in the relations of both the summer and the winter temperatures. The high summer heat of the north, which in the few months of its existence has the energy to develop that lovely carpeting of grass and flowers which gives to the low-lying lands, even to the 82nd parallel of latitude, a charm equal to that of the upland meadows of Switzerland, is in a measure wanting in the south; in its place frequent cold and dreary fogs navigate the atmosphere, and render dreary and desolate a region that extends far into what may be properly designated the habitual zone. The fields of anemones, poppies, saxifrages, and mountain pinks, of dwarf birches and willows, ARE REPLACED BY INTERMINABLE SNOW AND ICE, with only here and there bare patches of rock, to give assurance that something underlies the snow covering. Man's habitations in the northern hemisphere extend to the 78th parallel of latitude and formerly extended to the 82nd; in the southern hemisphere they find their limit in Fuegia, in THE FIFTY-FIFTH PARALLEL fully 350 miles nearer the equator than where, as in the Shetland Islands, ladies in lawn dresses disport in the game of tennis. And still, 700 miles further from the equator, in Siberia, Nordenskjold found forests of pine rising with trunks 70 to 100 feet in height."    

In the "Voyage of a Naturalist," by C. Darwin, pages 210 and 212, we are informed that:    

"One side of the harbour is formed by a hill about 1,500 feet high, which Captain Fitzroy has called after Sir J. Banks, in commemoration of his disastrous excursion which proved fatal to two men of his party, and nearly so to Dr. Solander. The snowstorm which was the cause of this misfortune, happened in the middle of January, corresponding to our July in the latitude of Durham."    

"We were detained here several days by bad weather. The climate is certainly wretched. The summer solstice is now (25th December) passed, yet every day snow fell on the hills, and in the valleys there was rain accompanied by sleet."    

It is utterly impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact that these evidences furnish indisputable proof that the figure of the earth cannot be globular. If it were of that shape the same conditions would be found at equal latitudes north and south, which we have seen is not the case.