For then nothing The advantage created by the earth's spherical shape is well known; but few know that its flattening as a spheroid is the only thing preventing the elevations on the dry land, or even smaller mountains perhaps thrown up by earth quakes, from continuously displacing the earth's axis and perhaps appreciably so in not too long a time; this might happen if the swelling out of the earth at the equator were not such a mighty mountain that the centrifugal forceg of every other mountain can never noticeably bring it out of place in regard to its axis.