Note 36 — PREFATORY NOTE.
Reading edition
A very curious example of this sham science is seen in the argument, frequently used at the time, that, if the earth really moved, a stone falling from a height would fall back of the point immediately below its point of starting. This is used by Fromundus with great effect. It appears never to have occurred to him to test the matter by dropping a stone from the topmast of a ship. But the most beautiful thing of all is that Benzenburg has experimentally demonstrated just such an aberration in falling bodies as is mathematically required by the diurnal motion of the earth. See Jevons, Principles of Science, vol. i., p. 453, and ii., pp. 310, 311.