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They guess, in fact, that new improvements will be effected in the art of measurement; they know that geodesical processes, though much improved in our days, have still much to do to attain the precision displayed in the construction and determination of standards of the first order; and consequently they do not propose to keep the ancient definition, which would lead to having for unit a magnitude possessing the grave defect from a practical point of view of being constantly variable.
Having examined the salt-works, and terminated our geodesical operations, we departed at the decline of day to sleep at an Indian hut, some miles distant, near the ruins of the castle of Araya. Directing our course southward, we traversed first the plain covered with muriatiferous clay, and stripped of vegetation; then two chains of hills of sandstone, between which the lagoon is situated.
M. Biot quitted me afterwards to return to Paris, whilst I made the geodesical junction of the island of Majorca to Iviza, and to Formentera, obtaining thus, by means of one single triangle, the measure of an arc of parallel of one degree and a half. I then went to Majorca, to measure there the latitude and the azimuth.
The second species of inequality can be recognised only by geodesical or barometric levellings, or by the course of rivers. It is called a mesa or table, and is composed of small flats, or rather convex eminences, that rise insensibly to the height of a few toises.
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