142 



difficulty in gaiuing a reception among us. The 

 revolution f the planets about their own axis was 

 known also in the schools of Pythagoras and Pla- 

 to. There was nothing left to the moderns to say 

 new, respecting the return of comets, their nature, 

 and their orbits. The Chaldeans, Egyptians, Pytha- 

 goras, Democritus, Hippocrates of Chios, Artemi- 

 ttorus, and Seneca, had already fully settled the 

 theory of them ; though the moderns, it is true 3 

 demonstrated more clearly some parts of it. The 

 mountains, Tallies, and inhabitants of the moon had 

 been suggested and supposed by Orpheus, Pythago- 

 ras, Auaxagoras, and Democritus. 



5. Aristotle knew the weight of the air ; Seneca its 

 spring and elasticity. Leucippus, Chrysippus, Aris- 

 tophanes, and the stoics, had fully accounted for thun- 

 der and earthquakes. Pytheas, and .Seleucus of Ery~ 

 threa,precededDcscartes in explaining the cause of the 

 ebbing and flowing of the sea ; and Pliny, before 

 Sir Isaac Newton, had made mention in that case, of 

 the combined forces of sun and moon. 



6. We have also seen, that Hippocrates and Plato 

 knew the circulation of the bloed, and that Rufus 

 described, 1600 years ago, the naricous parastafas, 

 called by us the Fallopian tubes. And by the senti- 

 ment of an able surgeon of the present age, we 1-ave 

 snewn, that there were as great advances made in Hat 

 art a thousand years ago, as there are at present. 

 The art of working metals, of rendering golti potable, 

 glass ductile and malleable ; that of distillation, of 

 pa.nting upon glass, of making gun. powder, ar.u a 

 thousand other chymical preparations, witn winch we 

 have proved the ancients to have been acquainted, 

 leave not the least doubt of their skill in ciiymistry. 

 We have seen that the sentiment of Harvey, S eno, 

 and Hhedi, respecting generation by eggs, was only 

 a renewal ot what iiad been taught by Hippocrates, 

 Emjeclotie-, Arisa/tle, and Macrobius ; and the 

 system of Kartzoeker and Leuhenhock, wiih respect 



