554 Geography. 



in exploring distant countries. The collections 

 of this nature formed by Harris, Campbell, 

 Churchill, Salmon, Guthrie, HAWKswoRXKy 

 Dalrymple, and Mayor, of Great-Britain; by 

 Des Brosses, of France; by Estala, of Spain ; and 

 many others, hold an important rank amon^ the 

 instructive and amusing productions of the age. 



The discoveries and improvements above stated^ 

 besides correcting and enlarging our geographical 

 knowledge, have also led to many and important 

 additions to the stock oi general science. There is 

 scarcely any part of natural philosophy, or natural 

 history, v/hich has rrot received considerable im- 

 provement from this source. New light has been 

 thereby shed on the doctrines of the tides, and the 

 zvinds; the nature and laws of magnetic variations 

 have been better understood; the sciences of zoo- 

 iogy, botany, and mineralogy have been greatly ex=* 

 tended and advanced; immense collections of na- 

 tural cin^iosities have been made from every known 

 region of the earth; and, what is by no means of 

 least importance, opportunities have been afforded 

 of studying human nature in a great variety of forms^, 

 of making rich collections from the vocabularies of 

 different languages, of comparing habits and cus^ 

 toms, of investigating the records and traditions of 

 nations scarcely at all known before; and thus of 

 acquiring rich materials tow^ards completing the 

 natural and civil history of man. 



Strange as it may appear, our knowledge of 

 Antiquities, principally by means of geographical 

 discoveries, and the inquiries naturally flowing 

 from them, has become incomparably greater than 

 was ever before possessed by man. " When the 

 " Egyptians,'' says a modern eloquent wTiter, 

 *' called the Greeks children in Antiquities, we may 



