MERIDIAN MEASUREMENT. The determination of the form and size of the earth from the measurement of an arc of a meridian has been a favorite problem with mathematicians from the earliest times. but up to the middle of last century their opera tions were not carried on with exactness sufficient to render their conclusions of much value. Since that time, however, geodesy has so rapidly progressed. owing to the invention of more accurate instruments and the discovery of new methods, that the measurement of the meridian can now be performed with the utmost accuracy imagin able. The madus aperandi is as follows: Two stations, having nearly the same longi tude, are chosen ; their latitude and longitude are accurately determined (the. error of a second in latitude introduces a considerable error into the result), and the direction of the meridian to be measured ascertained; then a base line is measured with the g,reatest accuracy, as an error here generally becomes increased. at every subsequent step;. and then, by the method known as triangulation (q.v.), the length of the arc of the meridian contained between the parallels of latitude of the two stations is ascertained: As the previously found latitudes of its two extremities give the number of degrees it contains, the average length of a degree of this are can be at once determined; and also—on the supposition that the length of at degree is uniform—the length of the whole meridional circumference of the earth. This operation of meridian measurement has been per formed at different thnes on a great many arcs lying between 68° n. lat. and 38° s. lat., and-the results show a steady though irregular increase in the length of the degree of latitude as the latitude increases. On the supposition that this law of increase holds good to the poles, the length of every tenth degree of latitude in English feet is as in the following table: This result shows that the earth is not spherical, as in that case the length of all degrees of latitude would be alike, but of a more or less spheroidal form—that is having its ettrvature becoming less and less as we go horn the extremity of its greater or equatorial. diameter to the lesser or polar axis. See EARTII. It was by the measurement of meridional arc that, in 1792-99, the length of a quadrant of the earth's circumference was determined, in order to form the basis of the French metrical system (see MbrnE).
MERIEtE, PROSPER, novelist, historian, and archaeologist, was born at Paris, Sept: 28,1803. His father, Jean Francois Leonore, was a painter of distinction, and seeretary to the ecole des Beaux Arts. The son eniered the college of Charlemagne, kept terms as a law-stndent, and became early acquainted with English and Spanish literature. The influence of Shakespeare, Calderon, and Goethe was then making itself felt in, France, and the romantic school, headed by Victor Hugo, was contending for the possession of the stage against the classic traditions of Racine. Merimee, a devotee of the new sect, published under a double disguise his first work, Le Thedtre de Clara, Gazul. a collection of studies for the stage, professing to be translated from the Spanish:
by a certain Joseph l'Estrange. This work raised great expectations, which were never realized. Meritnee did not become a dramatist, and one of these pieces failed when represented in 1850. His next publication, also pseudonymous, La Guzla, by .Hyacinthe Maglanovitch, was an effort to embody the spirit of the popular lays of Elyria and Mon tenegro. It was written to meet the then prevailing rage for Slavonic-poetry, and the. materials were taken at second hand. It was, however, admired in Germany, and received the approval of Goethe. Merlin& now became a regnlar contributor to the• Revue de Paris and the Revue des Deux Mondes ; and after one or two more anonymous efforts signed his name to Tamango. After the revolution of July he entered public life, and before long was made inspector of 'historical monuments, and in that capacity visited many parts of France, publishing the results of his researches in a series of reports. During all this tirne lie continued to write for his favorite reviews a series of romantic tales, in which terrible, almost repulsive, subjects are handled with wonder ful realistic power, and in a style singularly clear, condensed, and vigorous. TIIIS, series, in which the Etruscan Vase and the Capture of the Redoubt are especially note worthy, culminated in Colomba (1841), written by him when fresh from Corsica and its tales of vengeance. After this, his greatest and (with the exception of Arsene Guillot,. and Carmen) his last romance, Merimee, applied himself to historical researches. The Conspiracy of eatable and the Social War, studies of Roman history, preliminary to a life of Cmsar, on which he is said to have been occupied many years, appeared in 1844. In this year he was elected to the chair in the academy vacated by the death of C. Nodier. His History of Dom Pedro the Cruel (1848), dedicated to the countess of Mon tijo, the mother of the empress Eugenie, has been translated into English (1850), and . reviewed in the Edinburgh. After the fall of the Orleans dynasty he was placed on the commission to draw up an inventory of the art treasures left by them in France. In 1854 he published his False Demetrii, an episode of early Russian history, the preface to which was written in prison, where he was sent for criticising., in the Revue des Deux Mondes (1852), the sentence passed on his old acquaintance, .M.-Libri (q.v.), a sentence which he tried to get reversed in the senate June 11, 1861. Merirnee has also trans lated from Pushkin and Nicolas Gogol. Among his latest writings may be mentioned an introduction to Marino Vretro's Poetry of Modern Greece ,(1855), two brief articles in the Revue des Deux Momles (1864); and Lettres gine inconnue (1873; Eng. trans. 1874). 3lerinaee was made a senator in 1853; president of the commission for reorganizing the bibliotheque ImperiaIe in 1858; commander of the legion of honor, April 12,1860. He was also one of the ten membres libres of the academie des Inscriptions. He died . Oct., 1870. ,