midday
The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what Lavalle himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labours -- labours from which the youngest and least impressionable planeur might well have shrunk . He had traced through cold and heat , across the deeps of the oceans , with instruments of his own invention , over the inhospitable heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage of the deserts , league by league , patiently , unweariedly , remorselessly , from their ever-shifting cradle under the magnetic pole to their exalted death-bed in the utmost ether of the upper atmosphere -- each one of the Isoconical Tellurions -- Lavalle 's Curves , as we call them to-day . He had disentangled the nodes of their intersections , assigning to each its regulated period of flux and reflux . Thus equipped , he summons Herrera and Tinsley , his pupils , to the final demonstration as calmly as though he were ordering his flighter for some midday journey to Marseilles . `` I have proved my thesis , '' he writes . `` It remains now only that you should witness the proof . We go to Manila to-morrow .