IXTIIODUCTIOX. 07 



d\e of the seventeenth century. He was tlie first to distinguish 

 between general a?id 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 diliereiit 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 corresponduig 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 Ritter.* 



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 be esteemed less ad- 

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

 pecially with reference to the general results of a science which 



- though the experiments on the pendulum by Richer had been made 

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

 Principia Mathematica Philosojjhice Natnralis were not communicated 

 in manuscript to tlie Royal Society until April, 1G80. Much uncer- 

 tainty seems to prevail regarding the birth-place of Varenius. Ja;cher 

 says it was England, while, according to La Biographie Universclle 

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

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

 that city (see his Geographia Comparativa), that both suppositions ai'e 

 false. Varenius expressly says that lie 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 probajjly born at Luneburg ( TFV/^e?i. Mem. 

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

 187). 



* Carl Ritter's Erdkundeim VerhuUniss zur Naturund zvr Geschichte 

 des Menschen, oder allgemeine vergleichende Geographic (Geojjraphy in 

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

 Geography). 



