SUMMAIIY. xv 



Hellenic power. Western Asia the great thoroughfare of nations 

 emigrating from the East; the uEgean island -world the connecting 

 link between Greece and the far East. Beyond the 48th degree of 

 latitude, Europe and Asia are fused together as it were by flat steppes. 

 Pherecydes of Syros, and Herodotus considered the whole of North 

 Scythian Asia as appertaining to Sarmatian Europe. Maritime power, 

 and Doric and Ionic habits of life transmitted to the colonial cities. 

 Advance towards the east, to the Euxine and Colchis; first acquaintance 

 with the western shore of the Caspian sea, confounded according to 

 Hecataeus with the encircling eastern ocean. Inland trade and barter 

 carried on by the chain of Scytho-scolotic races with the Argippgeans, 

 Issedones, and the Arismaspes, rich in gold. Meteorological myth of 

 the Hyperboreans. Opening of the port of Gadeira towards the west, 

 which had long been closed to the Greeks. Navigation of Coleeus of 

 Samos. A glance into the boundless ; an unceasing striving for the far 

 distant ; accurate knowledge of the great natural phenomenon of the 

 periodic swelling of the sea p. 517. 



II. Campaigns of the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, and 

 the long-enduring influence of the Bactrian empire. With the exception 

 of the one great event of the discovery and opening of tropical America 

 eighteen and a-half centuries later, there was no other period in which 

 a richer field of natural views, and a more abundant mass of mai erials 

 for the foundations of cosmical knowledge, and of comparative ethnolo- 

 gical study were presented at once to one single portion of the human 

 race. The use of these materials, and the intellectual elaboration of 

 matter, are facilitated and rendered of more importance by the direction 

 imparted by the Stagirite to empirical investigation, philosophical 

 speculation, and to the strict definitions of a language of science. The 

 Macedonian expedition was, in the strictest sense of the word, a scien- 

 tific expedition. Callisthenes of Olynthus, the pupil of Aristotle, and 

 friend of Theophrastes. The knowledge of the heavens, and of the earth 

 and its products, was considerably increased by intercourse with Babylon, 

 and by the observations that had been made by the dissolved Chaldean 

 order of priests p. 535. 



III. Increase of the contemplation of the universe under the Ptolemies. 

 Grecian Egypt enjoyed the advantage of political unity, whilst its 

 geographical position, and the entrance to the Arabian Gulf, brought 

 the profitable traffic of the Indian Ocean within a few miles of the south- 

 eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The kingdom of the Seleucidae 

 did not enjoy the advantages of a maritime trade, and was frequently 

 shaken by the conflicting nationality of the different Satrapies. Active 

 traffic on rivers and caravan tracks with the elevated plateaux of the 

 Seres, north of the TJttara-Kuru and the valley of the Oxus. Knowledge 

 of monsoons. Re-opening of the canal connecting the Red Sea with the 

 Nile above Bubastus. History of this water route. Scientific insti- 

 tutions under the protection of the Lagides; the Alexandrian Museum, 

 and two collections of books in Bruchium and at Rhakotis. Peculiar 

 direction of these studies. A happy generalisation of views manifests 

 'tself, associated with an industrious accumulation of materials. Era- 



