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has been traced back in the Chinese records
                                         to 617 A.D. [4]
                                            The theoretical views founded on New-
                                         ton’s great law of universal gravitation led
                                         to the conclusion that the inclination of the
                                         earth’s equator to the plane of her orbit (the
                                         obliquity of the ecliptic) has been diminish-
                                         ing slowly since prehistoric times; and this
                                         fact has been confirmed by Egyptian and
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