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Forms and masses have a definition and a firmness wholly remarkable in their independence of the usual low relief's reliance on pictorial and purely linear design. They do not blend picturesquely with the background, and do not depend on their suggestiveness for their character.

In painting, the necessity for scientific information, empirical if not rational, is still more conspicuous. What gives the grotesqueness of Chinese pictures, unless their utter disregard of the laws of appearances their absurd linear perspective, and their want of aerial perspective?

A more fundamental one still, which the writer feels may prove insurmountable, is based on a law of nature which we are bound to accept. It is that when we increase the size of any flying-machine without changing its model we increase the weight in proportion to the cube of the linear dimensions, while the effective supporting power of the air increases only as the square of those dimensions.

There are also some small linear and sickle-formed reefs, lying a little way out at sea. All these reefs are covered, as I am informed by Captain Moresby, by living corals. Here, then, we have all the characters of reefs of the barrier class; and in some outlying reefs we have an approach to the structure of atolls.

The enormous extent of the mountain region can be measured in linear and square miles; it can be bounded roughly by the Pacific Ocean and the fountains of the great rivers which course through the Mississippi valley; it can be placed before the eye in an astronomical position between such and such latitudes and longitudes, but such descriptions convey to the mind only an idea which is quite vague and general.

Many hundreds of these cones are seen in central France, in the ancient provinces of Auvergne, Velay, and Vivarais, where they observe, for the most part, a linear arrangement, and form chains of hills.

Ideas of the beautiful in linear geometric forms are actually formed by technique, and taste in selecting as the most beautiful certain ornaments produced in art is but choosing between products that in their evolution gave it its character and powers, precisely as the animal selects its favorite foods from among the products that throughout its history constitute its sustenance and shape its appetites.

The S. border of Bullialdus has been manifestly modified by the presence of the great ring-plain A, a deep irregular formation with linear walls, which is connected with it by a shallow valley.

In the quadrangle of the cloister is a series of pictures by Paolo Uccello, who, by the introduction of linear perspective, of which he is esteemed the inventor, made a new epoch in art. In the "chapel of the Spaniards" is a famous collection of frescos by Giotto's scholars. A large, thoughtful, and attractive composition is called the Wisdom of the Church.

It has twelve wall and eight interior columns connected at every fourth floor by diagonal braces; these columns carry 1,800 pounds to the linear foot. The wind pressure calculated at the rate of 30 lbs. to the square foot is enormous and is provided for by deep wall girders and knee braces which transfer the strain to the columns and to the foundation.