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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: change in the position of the fixed stars, in fact, of the whole
celestial system, now known by the name of the precession of the
equinoxes; the first great catalogue of fixed stars, to the number of
1080; attempts to ascertain whether the length of years and days were
constant; with which, with his characteristic love of truth, he seems to
have been hardly satisfied. He too invented the planisphere, or mode of
representing the starry heavens upon a plane, and is the father of true
geography, having formed the happy notion of mapping out the earth, as
well as the heavens, by degrees of latitude and longitude.
Strange it is, and somewhat sad, that we should know nothing of this
great man, should be hardly able to distinguish him from others of the
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