But Isidore of Seville, in his Liber de Natura Rerum, Basil of Caesarea, Ambrose of Milan, and Vergil Bishop of Salzburg, an Irish saint, declined to regard the question as a closed one.

"Nam partes eius (i.e.of the earth) quatuor sunt," argued Isidore.

Curiously enough, the copy of the works of the Saint of Seville used by the author (published at Rome in 1803), was salvaged from a wreck which occurred on the Australian coast many years ago.

It is stained with seawater, and emits the musty smell which tells of immersion.

An inscription inside the cover relates the circumstance of the wreck.