The minuteness of this displacement, about 20.50", makes its precise determination an extremely difficult matter.
This work, the Taj-ut-Tevarikh (Crown of Chronicles), is reckoned, on account of its ornate yet clear style, one of the masterpieces of the old school, and forms the first of an unbroken series of annals which are written, especially the later among them, with great minuteness and detail.
The commencement of anatomical investigations deserves notice here as influencing the general accuracy and minuteness with which zoological work was prosecuted, but it was not until a late date that their full influence was brought to bear upon systematic zoology by Georges Cuvier (1769-1832).
The efforts of the best minds in zoology had been directed for thirty years or more to ascertaining with increased accuracy and minuteness the structure, microscopic and gross, of all possible forms of animals, and not only of the adult structure but of the steps of development of that structure in the growth of each kind of organism from the egg to maturity.
A crystal lens, turned on the lathe, was discovered by Layard at Nimrud along with glass vases bearing the name of Sargon; this will explain the excessive minuteness of some of the writing on the Assyrian tablets, and a lens may also have been used in the observation of the heavens.