Maupertuis on an exoedition to LaPland to measure the lendth of a degree of one of the earth's meridians.The experition was undertaken to settle a dispute as to the shape of the earth. Newton and Huygens had concluded,from mathematical theory,that the earth is flattened at the poles.But about 1712 the Italian astronomer and mathematician Giovanni Domenico Cassino (1625-1712),and his French-born son Jacques Cassini (1677-1756),measured an arc of longitude extending from Dunkir to Perpignan,and obtained a result that seemed to Support the Cartesian Contention that the earth is elongaterd at the poles.