had the dog guarded in another apartment. I entertained the cat in a most sumptuous manner, being desirous to see what sort of a meal she would make without her friend, who had hitherto been her constant table companion. The cat enjoyed the meal with great glee, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the dog. I had had a partridge for dinner, half of which I intended to keep for supper. My wife covered it with a plate, and put it into a cupboard, the door of which she did not lock. The cat left the room, and I walked out on business. My wife, meanwhile, sat at work in an adjoining apartment. highest of the three. The higher is called the comparative degree, and the highest is called the superlative degree. Accordingly, there are three degrees of comparison, the positive, the comparative, the superlative. It has been denied that the positive is a degree of comparison. The term may not be rigidly correct, but it is in use, and no better substitute has been offered. Our business is not so much to criticise as to explain; and consequently only then must we enter into criticism when it smooths the way to explanation. Now these three forms of speech which I have just given, stand in Latin, thus : "When I returned home, she related to me the following circumstances:-The cat having hastily left the dining-room, went to the dog, and mewed uncommonly loud, and in different tones of voice; which he from time to time answered with a short bark. They then went both to the door of the room where the cat had dined, and waited till it was opened. One of my children opened the door, and the two friends entered the apartment. The mewing of the cat excited my wife's attention. She rose from her seat, and stepped softly to the door which stood ajar, to observe what was going on. The cat led the dog to the cupboard which contained the partridge, pushed off it the plate which covered it, and, taking out my intended supper, laid it before her canine friend, who devoured it greedily. Probably the cat, by her mewing, had given the dog to understand what an excellent meal she had made, and how sorry she was that he had not participated in it; but, at the same time, had given him to understand that something was left for him in the cupboard, and persuaded him to follow her thither. Since that time I have paid particular attention to these animals, and am perfectly convinced that they communicate to each other whatever seems interesting to either." THE LYNX. Another animal of the feline race is the lynx, of which we give an engraving. Its eas are terminated with a tuft of hairs invariably black. The names given by the Turks and the Persians to the lynx are founded on this peculiarity. This animal was formerly spread over the Old World, was common in France, and has but recently disappeared from Germany. It is found in Spain, and in the north of the European continent. America certainly produces two species, of which one, the Canadian lynx, is a fine creature. The aspect of the lynx is rather gentle than savage, and indeed appears to be less ferocious than most of the species of the same genus. It walks and leaps, or bounds like a cat, and hunts martens, ermines, squirrels, and other creatures. Its skin is changed by climate and season, and in high latitudes, particularly in winter, the fur is much finer and thicker, and more esteemed. When of a pale colour, with tolerably distinct spots, the fur is extremely valuable. The Russians sell the skins of lynxes to the Chinese at a rate varying from about sixteen shillings to five or six pounds each, exclusive of the fore-feet, which are also valuable, and sold separately. Many thousand skins of the Canadian lynx have been imported in one year by the Hudson's-bay Company. Among ize hunters of America the lynx is called the wild cat. LESSONS IN LATIN.-No. IX. By JOHN R. BEARD, D.D. DEGREES OF COMPARISON. WHEN two objects are compared together, the ideas involved in the word more and most come into prominence. Thus we say, "the father is more learned than the son;" "Cicero is the most learned of the Romans." The question which we have to answer is, how are such forms of thought expressed in the Latin? Observe that at the bottom of more learned and most learned is the quality learned; for no one can be more learned or most learned without being learned. This ground quality is something positive, a real definite quality. Hence in grammar it is called the positive degree. It is the first step. A higher step is indicated by our word more; and the highest by most. You thus see that besides the positive there are two other degrees, of which the one is the higher, and the other the Remember, then, ior is the You is us, that is the positive, or ordinary form of the adjective. Look at the terminations of the adjective. In the first case In the second case, it is ior, that is the comparative. In the third case, it is issimus, that is the superlative. You thus see that what in the English is expressed by more is in Latin expressed by ior; and what in the English is expressed by most is in Latin expressed by issimus. form of comparison, issimus is the superlative form. might thus obtain for yourself the rule, and say that to the stem of the positive add ior, and you have the comparative; and to the stem of the positive add issimus, and you have the superlative. Such in reality is the rule. These two endings ior, m. and f. ius, n.; and issimus, a, um, are to be added to the stem of adjectives and participles, in order to convert the positive degree into the comparative and the superlative. I subjoin some instances: If, however, the adjective ends in er, rimus is used instead of issimus, for the sake of sound; as, miser, unhappy, miserable; miser-ior, more unhappy; miser-rimus, most unhappy; pulcher (pulchr-i), beautiful; pulchr-ior, more beautiful; pulcher rimus, most beautiful. In like manner, vetus (g. veter-is), old, veterrimus, oldest; the comparative veter-ior is rarely used; also nuper-us, late; (no comparative;) nuper-rimus, latest. The six adjectives which follow, take timus in the superla. tive;-namely, facil-is, easy; difficil-is, not easy, difficult; simil is, like; dissimil-is, unlike; gracil-is, thin; humil-is, humble thus, facil-limus, most easy; simil-limus, most like; gracil-limus, most thin; humil-limus, most humble. In full, thus: Facil-is, easy; facil-ior, easier; facil-limus, easiest; &c. There are some compound adjectives which form their comparatives and superlatives, by endings different from these. Such adjectives are those which in the positive end in dicus, flous, and volus; for instance, maledicus, magnificus, benevolus. I have called these compound adjectives because they are composed each of two words. Maledicus is formed from male, badly (in an evil manner), and dico, I speak; and consequently denotes an evil-speaker; magnificus is formed from magnus, great, and facio, Î do; and consequently denotes a great doer ; benevolus is formed from bene, well, and volo, I wish; and consequently denotes a well-wisher. To form the comparative of these, add to the stem entior, and to form the superlative, add entissimus; thus: Many Latin adjectives do not take any of these forms of comparison. Such are adjectives which have before the termination us; as idone-us, fit. These are formed by prefixing magis, more; and maxime, most; as, magis idoneus, more fit; maxime idoneus, most fit; so, pius, pious; magis pius, more pious; maxime pius, most pious. in the same way, form nearly all adjectives and participles ending in Icus, Imus, inus, ivus, ōrus, undus, andus, and bundus. negro); simia, ae, f. an ape; Syracusae, arum, f. Syracuse; murus, i, Nihil est naturae hominis accommodatius quam beneficentia; nihil est amabilius quam virtus; lux est velocior quam sonitus; nihil est melius quam sapientia; multi homines magis garruli suzi quam hirundines; pauperes saepe sunt munificentiores quam d vites; in adversis rebus saepe sunt homines prudentiores quam in secundis; divitissimorum vita saepe est miserrima; simular amoris rejor est quam odium; nihil est melius quam ratio; s. simus est sapiens; Homerus omnium Graecarum poetarum est major est quam terra; luna minor est quam terra; omnium beatsveterrimus; adula est pessimum malum (evil); urbs Syracus maxima et pulcherrima est omnium Graecarum urbium; pess homines sunt maledici; omnium hominum maledicentissimi i t fratres tui; in amicitia plus valet similitudo morum quam affinitas, soror tua amabilior est quam mea. ENGLISH-LATIN. In the English meanings added to facilis above, I have given the forms easy, easier, easiest. Here you see changes made at the end of the positive, similar to those you have just been Nothing is worse than the pretence of love; the sun is very instructed to make in the Latin. First, the positive easy is great; the sun is greater than the moon; the life of men is verr changed into east, and then to this, as the stem, we add er times the happiest; the labour is very easy; my labour is estim short; the richest are often the unhappiest; the poorest are some for the comparative, like the Latin ior, and est for the super-than yours; the customs (character) of men are very unlike; the lative, like the Latin issimus. This similarity of forms indi-king is very free in giving; the worst men are not often happy cates in the two languages a sameness of origin. As too, in English, we use more and most, so do the Latins use, magis, and maxime, to denote the comparative and the superlative. Magis and maxime must be used for this purpose, in the case of adjectives which do not admit the termination forms. Besides expressing the formal degree of comparison, the Latin superlative signifies a very high degree of the quality involved in the positive, as doctissimus, very learned; pater tuus est doctissimus, thy father is very learned. So in English, Milton uses wisest "the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud, to build His temple right against the temple of God." good men are happy; very good men are happiest; God is the happiest of all; the best men are some times despised by the worst, the health of my friend is very weak; thy father's garden is very beautiful; thy son's garden is more beautiful; the labour is very difficult; the walls of the city are very low (humilis); mos (plurimi) men love their native country; nothing is better that virtue; the port is very much visited; God is the greatest, bes and wisest of all; the customs (or character) of the Lacedemer ana were very simple; the horse is very swift; ravens are very black, thy father is very benevolent and very liberal; thy brother bas a very beautiful house; a very beautiful house is built by ty brother; virgins must (debeo) be very modest; thy sister is more modest than thy brother; the ape is like men; is the ape ver much like men? of all animals the ape is most like men; nothing light is very quick; light is quicker than sound. Latin comparatives are declined like adjectives of two termi-is sweeter than friendship; the Lacedemorians were very brave: nations, and according to the third declension. Thus, positive altus, high, makes comparative altior, higher; altior is masculine and feminine, the neuter is altius. Beneficentia. ae, f. well doing, kind action (E. R. beneficence); luna, ae, f. the moon (E. R. lunar); pauper, pauperis, a poor man (E. R. pauper); natura, ae, f. nature; sapientia, ae, f. wisdom (E. R. sapient); odium i, u hatred (E R. odious); amor, óris, m. love (E. R. amorous); hirundo, hirundinis, f a swallow; Lacedemonius, i, m. a Lacedemonian; simplex, simplfcis, simple; mos, moris, m. custom; in the plural, character (E. R. morals); velox, velócis, swift (E. R. velocity); corvus, i, m. a raven; niger, nigra, nigrum, black (E. R. • These comparatives and superlatives are evidently formed in the regular way, from such nouns as maledicens, magnificens, and benevolens, two of which, at least, are in use in the language, and have the same meaning as the other positives above given. LESSONS IN BOTANY.-No. V. "I SHOULD like to botanise," is the expression of a which we are concerned to gratify. We shall glance, there fore, at systematic botany, by which alone the discrimination or recognition of a plant can be secured. Without such ability, even a knowledge of the properties of the vegetabi tribes would be of little or no use. For want of this acquaintance with them, persons have lost their lives by mistaking noxious and poisonous plants for wholesome herbs; and others have administered what they deemed to be salutary and restoring medicines, but which have proved to be deadv poison. It will consequently be evident that the study systematic botany is one of great utility, associated with ob jects of peculiar interest. Some persons may anticipate difficulty from observing the hard and outlandish names employed in botany; but it should be remembered that this science is not the study of names but of an admirable and most important branch of the economy of nature; and even the use of a hard name does not necessarily imply that the thing itself is difficult to be understood. Aloysia citriodora is a hard name, yet multituds who would consider it to be so are well acquainted with the shrub to which it is applied-the sweet-scented verbena; and the Jasminum officinale is nothing more than that sweetly stance for a stamen, or stamens; and that the other letters fragrant flower the common white jessamine, under another connected with it are nothing more than indicative of succesappellation. sive numbers; as monandria, one stamen, triandria, three stamens, &c. A knowledge of this will carry us through eleven classes of the Linnæan system. When the use of spring-guns became illegal, a gentleman who wished to protect his trees and flowers had a board placed in his garden, with the inscription "Terrofiokaibloudomenoi The classes, it must also be remarked, are subdivided into set on these premises;" and by the awful length and myste- orders, in denoting which the termination gynia is of frequent rious appearance of this word, kept off many an intruder. occurrence. Literally, it means female, but it stands, in this And yet, after all, it meant nothing. Not so is it with the instance, for a pistil; while the preceding part of the word, as terms adopted by men of true science; they mean something, monogynia, digynia, or trigynia is formed exactly in the way just and generally the meaning is well worth having. Dicotyledon noticed, by adding, in each case, the name of a number. or Monocotyledon is a term of somewhat formidable aspect; There are some persons, but the reader who has observed the explanation given of it in Lesson No. I., has an idea as well as a name, and the means of understanding and of making an important distinction in the structure of plants. Among the reasons for the use of such names in Botany, one may be stated. The words of some language or other must become current, and hence the question has arisen, which shall it be? Suppose it to be French, or German, or Spanish, or Portuguese, it is evident that to the many it would remain an unknown tongue. But the Latin and Greek languages are employed in this and some other sciences, that the same appellations of plants may be recognised by students of different nations, and that they may be able to read the works written on these subjects without the trouble and expense of translating and printing in a variety of languages. We shall not make any further demand in this respect on our readers than is absolutely necessary; but we wish them all to remember that the power of acquiring words apparently hard, is generally increased in proportion as it is tasked, and that an effort which, at first sight, looks as it were impracticable, becomes, after due repetition, perfectly easy. Many a working gardener, if asked, could give them such a string of apparently difficult names of plants and flowers, which it is absolutely necessary for him to know, as would leave this fact beyond all possible dispute. Two names are especially prominent in connexion with systematic botany; they are those of Linnæus and Jussieu. Linnæus, a native of Sweden, who flourished about a century ago, was the first person who facilitated the study of plants by anything deserving the name of a system. He founded his arrangement on the structure of the flowers. Jussieu took another basis for the system of which he is the father, involving a more minute and difficult investigation. Each system takes the name of its founder, and is called the Linnæan or Jussieuean; but frequently the former is described as the artificial and the latter as the natural system. We do not enter on a criticism of the respective merits of the two, but simply state that we shall adopt the classification of Linnæus in preference to that of Jussieu, as the better adapted to our present purpose, as likely to be more acceptable and attainable, and also as equally useful to those for whom the present series of botanical lessons is designed. We have already described those two important parts of a flower, the stamen and the pistil (see Lesson No. II.), and with these it becomes the student to have a thorough acquaintance, as upon some circumstances connected with them Linnæus founded twenty-four classes or divisions, in one of which every individual of the thousands of plants in the vegetable kingdom may be placed. That the system is complete it were absurd to contend. "For a long time," says the great Swedish botanist, "I have laboured to establish it; I have made many discoveries, but I have not been able to perfect it; yet while I live I shall continue to labour for its completion. In the mean time I have published what I have been able to discover; and whosoever shall resolve the few plants which still remain shall be my Magnus Apollo. Those are the greatest botanists who are able to correct, augment, and perfect this method, which those who are unqualified should not attempt." Linnæus did well, but that much remained for others to do is evident when we know that the number of species with which he was acquainted was probably not an eighth of those with which botanists are now familiar. The reader will observe that we now enter on a course in which the letters andria will form a principal part of several "Who allium call their onions and their leeks;" but we are not of that number. We prefer the simple English names of plants, and shall generally use them. Many of these are connected with old times and customs; and often do they convey some idea of the uses of the plants to which they are given. CLASS I.-MONANDRIA. Plants bearing flowers with One Stamen only. ORDER I. MONOGYNIA. One Pistil. Of this kind our ditches and muddy ponds produce one example that may be easily procured. It is called mare's-tail, and has neither calyx nor blossom. Its single stamen is terminated by an anther slightly cloven, behind which is the pistil, with its awl-shaped stigma, tapering to a point. The stem is straight and jointed, and the leaves grow in whorls, or circles round the joints; at the base of each leaf is a flower, so that the number of flowers and leaves is equal. Its season of flowering is the month of May. ORDER II. DIGYNIA. Two Pistils. Three British annual plants, known by the name of the water starwort. They have two petals, curved inwards, but no calyx. They are scientifically called callitriche, from two Greek words meaning beautiful hair. words, and no difficulty whatever will be felt if it be re- and generally flowers in June. A single petal forms its corolia membered that literally meaning male, it stands in this in- or blossom, which is funnel-shaped. The leaves grow in pairs, and are sometimes variegated with stripes of yellow or white. The berries have been used by dyers to give a durable green colour to six or wool by the addition of alum. Foremost of the fowers which grace the hedge-bank in April is the germander speedwell, sometimes called cat's-eye, and eye-bright. Thas Ebenezer Elliott says,— *Bize eyebright! loveliest fower of all that grow In Sower-loved England: Flower whose hedge-side gaze Is like an infant's! What beart does not know Thee, ciastered smiler of the bank, where plays The sunbeam on the emerald snake, and strays The dazzling rill, companion of the road." The notched leaves of this plant, in shape not unlike the leaves of a rose, but growing opposite to each other on the stem, sufficiently mark this species. We have in our fields, woods, and hedges, thirteen species of the speedwell, but only the germander with three other kinds bloom in April. The rest bloom from spring to autumn. The ash, the duck-weeds, and the sages belong to the same order. ORDER II. DIGYNIA. Two Pistila. The sweet-scented spring-grass. It has a spiked panicle, and flowers on short stalks. It flowers in May; grows in pastures and meadows, and is about a foot high. This plant is a true grass, but is separated on account of its naving only two stamens. The pleasant smell of new-made hay is chiefly owing to this plant. CLASS III-TRIANDRIA. Plants bearing flowers with Three Stamens. ORDER I. MONOGYNIA. One Pistal The crocus, having six equal segments, resembling petals, which blossoms in spring. Another plant is known as the autumnal crocus. The valerian, a numerous species of shrubs or under shrubs, with very variable leaves, and mostly reddish-white flowers. Twelve species are European, and four are British. The officinal, or great wild valerian, grows abundantly by the sides of rivers, and in ditches, and moist woods, in Great Britain. The root has a very strong smell, which arises from a volatile oil. It is used by rat-catchers to destroy rats. It is also employed in medicine, in the form of infusion, decoction, and tincture. The yellow iris is a beautiful flower in June. It is often called flag-sedge, and corn-flag, and in Scotland is named water-skeggs. Many people in rural districts value its long acrid root as a cure for the toothache. It is also used for dyeing a black colour, and for making ink. This flower is sometimes found in moist woods. The common purple iris is the fleur de luce, and it derives its name from Louis VII, king of Prance, who, when setting forth on his crusade to the Holy Land, chose it as his heraldic emblem. ORDER II. DIGTSIA. Two Pistils. confused notions of the Adriatic Sea, of Sicily, and of the south of Italy; and with the greater part of the Italian peninsula, they were wholly unacquainted. Previous to the Homens epoch, the Greeks believed in the existence of nations who inhabited the countries situated behind the regions where the sun appeared to them to rise and to set. They imagined that these nations lived in perpetual darkness, and they called them Cimmerians, a word evidently derived from the Hebrew Cinerum (pronounced Kimeririm,) and signifying dariness. In proportion as they became ac quainted with more regions that were enlightened by the sun, (that is, as the limits of the known world were extended by Voyage and discovery, they transported the Cimmerians and their dark abodes to a greater distance. In those early times, the Cimmerians were supposed to inhabit the borders of the Black Sea, near the Thracian Bosphorus, in Italy, and on the east and west, where the world was supposed to terminate. The people who were supposed to live the farthest north, were called Hyperboreans, because they were placed beyond Boreas, or in the extreme north; and those who lived the farthest south, were called Ethiopians,—literally, sunbarat,—because they were 'situated more directly under the sun's rays; their country lay south of Egypt, and was afterwards called Ethiopia rub Egypto, or Ethiopia under Egypt; under, evidently signifying farther to the south than the latter country. The ancients generally be lieved that Africa and Asia, or rather Ethiopia and India, were united by land still farther to the south; and they consequently considered the Ethiopians and Indians as near neighbours. This is the ground on which both Virgil and Lucan have supposed the Nile to take its rise in the frontiers of India. At the Homeric epoch the Greeks generally considered that the earth existed in the form of a disk. This disk was supposed to be centrally divided by the Euxine, or Black Sea, the Egean, and the Mediterranean into two parts, the one north and the other south; these parts were at a later period designated by Anaximander under the names of Europe and Aria, names which had been previously understood in a more restricted sense. The river Phasis in Colchis, or Pontus, on the east, and the straits of Hercules, or Gibraltar, on the west, were supposed to mark the limits of the world. The country of the Cimmerians, who were afterwards confounded with the Cimbri; and of the Marrobians, so called because they were supposed to be longer-lived than other mortals; Elysium, a the mind; the Fortunate Isies, which at a later period, under happy country which had no existence but in the fantasies of the names of Atlantis and Meropis, were the object of the philophie fictions of Piato and Theopompus; the country of the trimaspi, who saw so clearly because they had only one eye; and of the Gryphens, who guarded the precious metals of the Ripkean mountains; Colchis, the country of magic, peopled with monsters and prodigies; all these and many other ingenious fables, the offspring of the imaginations of the poets Homer and Hesiod, or rather of the people among whom they ived, were mixed up with notions purely geographical, The grasses and the corn-plants, which were described in and constituted the world at that period a scene of marvels, Lesson IV. ORDER III TRIGYNIA. Three Pistils. a receptacle of agreeable delusions and formidable mysteries. During the historic ages of Greece, cosmological systems were multiplied to an endless extent. Thales said that the earth The water chickweed; the jagged chickweed; the allseed. was a sphere; his disciple Anaximander taught that it was LESSONS IN GEOGRAPHY.-No. II. NOTIONS OF THE POETS. Honna win wrote his poems in the tenth century before the Careham en appears to have been acquainted with Greece, tia Arajeaza, the island of Crete, and the coast of Asia on the word of the Mediterranean. Within these limits, he appears to hate travelled; and he was, no doubt, personally wryanted with wome of the scenes which he describes. His worka, however, so that the geographical knowledge of the Greeks was at that time more limited than that of the Egypthame in the time of Moses, who lived seven centuries before 1. On the south, the Greeks only knew the valley of the Nie, and that part of Africa which extends from Egypt to the west as far as Cape Bon, and the commencement of the Atlas ain of mountains; and, on the east, the Syrian desert, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Persia. They possessed only very a cylinder. Leucippus said that it was a drum, and Heraclides that it was a boat. Many and curious were the notions the ancient philosophers held concerning the globe until voyages of discovery were begun. Herodotus made a great step in the descriptive geography of certain regions, especially in the east of Europe. Yet, notwithstanding his voyages into the three parts of the old world, he fills his narrative with childish tales and dreamy details. He only knew the names of Arabia, Iberia (or Spain), Celtica (or Gaul), the islands of Albion (Great Britain), and the Cassiterides (or Scilly Isles). He had correct notions on Africa, and particularly on Egypt, but the western part of this continent was unknown to him beyond Tripoli. His details on India, besides their uncertainty, are intermingled with fables taken from the legends or populat creeds of the extreme East. Among the tales more or less ingenious, we must not forget the ants that were as large as foxes, and that collected heaps of gold mixed with sand! Herodotus appears to have been unacquainted with western Europe. He does not speak of Massilia (Marsciles), a city and found it 5,000 stadia. Accordingly, he multiplied this number by 50, and found the measure of the earth's circumference to be 250,000 stadia. Making allowance for the errors which he committed, for want of the delicate instruments of observation, which we possess in modern times, this was a tolerable approximation to the truth. Syene, indeed, was not on the same meridian as Alexandria, but on one nearly 3o east of the meridian of that city; and instead of being exactly on the tropic, it was about half a degree north of that line. Eratosthenes affirmed the spherical figure of the earth, and asserted that the immensity of the ocean would not prevent vessels from going to India by continually shaping their course westward. founded by the Phocians a century before he was born. | the distance between the two places, Alexandria and Syene, Rome, which had been increasing in grandeur for about three hundred years before his time, is not even mentioned by name. Of Italy he only knew the south of that part anciently called Magna Græcia. The extreme west of Africa was equally unknown to the Greeks. Yet the Phenicians had made diseoveries in the Atlantic Ocean, and the periplus (sailing round) or coasting voyage of Hanno was executed considerably before Herodotus. The African voyage of the Carthaginian admiral, with the thirty-thousand persons which he had on board his vessels, is acknowledged to be authentic; opinions only differ as to the point where his maritime course terminated. Some will have it that, after having cleared the pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar), he went as far as the Gulf of Guinea; while others limit his exploratory voyage to the mouth of the Senegal river. Gossellin fixes the limit at Cape Nun. Pytheas, a citizen of Marseilles, performed a voyage to the North, before the time of Alexander the Great. He discovered Albion, or Great Britain, and always sailing in a northern direction, he reached the mysterious place called Ultima Thule, which he saw covered with ice, enveloped in mist, and as it were immersed in a horrible chaos. But what was Thule? This is a question which has puzzled all historiaus and geographers. Some have considered with good reason that this country was Jutland or the coasts of Norway called Thulemark; or perhaps Iceland, as Pytheas sailed through the Scandinavian seas, and his remarks relating to the coasts of the Baltic have been acknowledged exact. Others have claimed this appellation for the Shetland Isles on the north of Scotland. Hipparchus, who flourished about sixty years later than Eratosthenes, laid the foundation of astronomical geography, by endeavouring to determine the latitudes and longitudes of places by observations on the heavenly bodies. He constructed a catalogue of the fixed stars, and taught the projection of the sphere on a plane surface. Agatharchides, president of the Alexandrian library, who flourished rather before Hipparchus, wrote a treatise on the navigation and commerce of the Red Sea, and an account of Egypt and Ethiopia. He was the first who gave a correct description of the Abyssinians; he mentions the gold-mines wrought by the ancient kings of Egypt on the coast of the Red Sea, the process of working them, and the sufferings of the miners. He speaks, also, of the tools of copper found in these mines, supposed to have been used by the native Egyptians before the conquest of that country by the Persians. The voyages of Eudoxus of Cyzicus added new information to what was already gained Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher and naturalist, main-respecting the East. He visited Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy tained that the earth was of a spherical form, and he even Evergetes, about 130 B.C. He made two voyages to India, stated the measure of its circumference at four hundred and afterwards accomplished the circumnavigation of the thousand stadia (a Greek itinerary measure, equal to about African continent. Strabo, who gives an account of his 600 feet). Indications of the existence of Madagascar have voyages and discoveries, attempts repeatedly to throw disbeen noticed in his writings. As to Ceylon, he mentions it credit on the truth of his statements; but they have been under the name of Taprobane, and that a long time before the confirmed by those of later times. age of Ptolemy. The limits of the world according to Aristotle were, on the east, the Indus; on the west, the Tartessus, or the Guadalquivir; on the north, the Riphæan mountains, Albion and Ierne (Ireland); on the south, Libya, in which he places the river Chremetes, which rises out of the same mountains as the Nile, in order to disembogue itself in the Atlantic ocean; an idea which leads to the supposition that he confounded the Nile with the Niger. He admitted that the Caspian sea was a great inland lake, having no communication with any other sea. The conquests of Alexander the Great, led to the most distinct and extended motions of the ancient world. The most remarkable geographical fact of his reign, was the exploration of the Indus. A fleet of 800 vessels, under the command of Nearchus, descended this river, and went along the coast of Asia to the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The expedition of Alexander opened the eyes of the Greeks, but produced at that time, no results of any consequence to the science of geography. What was gained by his exploratory voyage, was lost by the dismemberment of his empire; and the historians of the period relapsed into their former ignorance. By degrees, however, geography assumed the dignity of a science. Eratosthenes, who flourished in the second century before the Christian era, composed a treatise on the subject. He was a native of Cyrene in Africa, and the keeper of the Alexandrian library. By means of instruments erected in the museum of the city of Alexandria, he found the obliquity of the ecliptic, to within half a degree of the truth. He was the first who attempted to determine the circumference of the earth by the actual measurement of an arc of one of its great circles. By means of sun-dials, he found that Syene, near a cataract of the Nile, which was situated, as he thought, on the same meridian as Alexandria, was immediately under the tropic of Cancer, so that at the time of the summer solstice, the sun was vertical to the inhabitants of Syene, and the gnomon had no shadow at noon. Thus, having measured the angle of the shadow of the gnomon at Alexandria, also at the time of the summer solstice, he found the distance of the sun from the zenith at noon, to be 7° 12', or one-fiftieth part of the ircumference of a great cirele, viz. 360°. He then computed QUESTIONS ON THE PRECEDING AND FORMER LESSON. ing the earth does it include? What is the form of the earth? day? What country is considered to be referred to in Scripture under the name of Tarshish? What country did the Romans understand under the name Africa Propria? What were the two different voyages to Tarshish, and how are they comprehended under the same name? What country is understood by the name Ophir ? How was gold transported from Ophir to Jerusalem ? What countries are understood by the names, the Isles, the Isles of the Gentiles, the Isles of the Sea, &c.? What country was known by the name of Sheba? What by Dedan? To what river were the names of the river and the great river applied? What famous cities and empires flourished on the banks of this river? With what countries did they trade? What is meant by the north in Scripture? What were its products mentioned by Ezekiel? With what parts of the world were the Greeks acquainted in the time of Homer, as appears by his writings? What notions had they of the world previous to his epoch? Who were the Cimmerians? the Hyperboreans? the Ethiopians? and the Marobians? What country was Elysium? the Fortunate Isles ? and Colchis? Who were the Arimaspi? and the Gryphons? Greeks? With what countries was Herodotus acquainted? What What notions regarding the form of the earth had the later cities were in existence unknown to him? Who first made discoveries in the Atlantic Ocean? What is meant by the Periplus of Hanno? What were the discoveries of Pytheas of Marseilles? In what did the geographical knowledge of Aristotle consist? What addition did the conquests of Alexander make to the science of |