INTRODUCTION. G7 



d\e of tha seventeenth century. lie was the first to distinguish 

 between general and special geography, the former of which 

 he subdivides into an absolute, or, properly speaking, terres- 

 trial part, and a relative or planetary portion, according to 

 the mode of considering our planet either with reference to its 

 surface in its different zones, or to its relations to the sun and 

 moon. It redounds to the glory of Varenius that his work on 

 General and Comparative Geography should in so high a 

 degree have arrested the attention of Newton. The imper- 

 fect state of many of the auxiliary sciences from which this 

 writer was obliged to draw his materials prevented his work 

 from corresponding to the greatness of the design, and it was 

 reserved for the present age, and for 'my own country, to see 

 the delineation of comparative geography, drawn in its full 

 extent, and in all its relations with the history of man, by the 

 skillful hand of Carl Hitter.* 



The enumeration of the most important results of the as- 

 tronomical and physical sciences which in the history of the 

 Cosmos radiate toward one common focus, may perhaps, to a 

 certain degree, justify the designation I have given to my 

 work, and, considered within the circumscribed limits I have 

 proposed to myself, the undertaking may he esteemed less ad- 

 venturous than the title. The introduction of new terms, es- 

 pecially with reference to the general results of a science which 



thoiuh the experiments on the pendulum by Richer had been made 

 nine years prior to the appearance of the Cambridge edition. Newton's 

 Principia Mathematics, Philosophies Natura2is were not communicated 

 in manuscript to the Royal Society until April, 1686. Much uncer- 

 tainty seems to prevail regarding the birth-place of Varenius. Jajcher 

 says it was England, while, according to La Biographic Universelle 

 (b. xlvii., p. 495), he is stated to have been bora at Amsterdam; but 

 it would appear, from the dedicatory address to the burgomaster ol 

 that city (see his Oeographia Comparaliva), that both suppositions are 

 false. Varenius expressly says that he had sought refuge in Amsterdam, 

 " because his native city had been burned and completely destroyed 

 during a long war," words which appear to apply to the north of Ger- 

 many, and to the devastations of the Thirty Years' War. In his dedica- 

 tion of another work, Descriptio regni Japonic^ (Amst., 1649), to the 

 Senate of Hamburgh, Varenius says that he prosecuted his elementary 

 mathematical studies in the gymnasium of that city. There is, there- 

 fore, every reason to believe that this admirable geographer was a 

 native of Germany, and was probably born at Luneburg ( \Vitten. Mem. 

 Theol., 1685, p. 2142; Zedler, Unttertal Lexicon, vol. xlvi., 1745, p. 

 187). 



* Carl Ritter's Erdkunde im Verhdltniss zur Natur vnd zvr Geschichte 

 de Menschen, oder al'gemeine verglcichende Geographic (Geography iu 

 relation to Nature and the History o' Man, or general Comparative 

 Geography}. 



