INTRODUCTION. 49 



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 imperfect 

 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 

 skilful hand of Carl Hitter.* 



tions of Varenius regarding the equinoctial current from east to west, to 

 which he attributes the origin of the Gulf Stream, beginning at Cape St. 

 Augustin and issuing forth between Cuba and Florida (p. 140). Nothing 

 can be more accurate than his description of the current which skirts the 

 western coast of Africa, between Cape Verd and the island of Fernando 

 Po in the Gulf of Guinea. Varenius explains the formation of spo- 

 radic islands by supposing them to be "the raised bottom of the sea:" 

 magna spirituum inclusorum vi, sicut aliquando monies e terra protusos 

 fsse quidam scribunt, (p. 225). The edition published by Newton in 

 1(>81 (auctior et emendatior) unfortunately contains no additions from 

 this great authority; and there is not even mention made of the polar 

 compression of the globe, although the experiments on the pendulum by 

 Richer had been made nine years prior to the appearance of the Cam- 

 bridge edition. Newton's Principia Mathematica Philosophies Naturali 

 were not communicated in manuscript to the Royal Society until April 

 1686. Much uncertainty seems to prevail regarding the birthplace of 

 Varenius. Jsecher says it was England, while, according to La Biogra- 

 phie Unirerselle (b. xLvii., p. 495), he is stated to have been born at 

 Amsterdam; but it would appear from the dedicatory address to the 

 Burgomaster of that city, (see his Geographia Comparative), that both 

 suppositions are false. Varenius expressly says that he had sought 

 refuge in Amsterdam, "because his native city had been burnt and 

 completely destroyed during a long war," words which appear to apply 

 to the north of Germany, and to the devastations of the thirty years' 

 war. In his dedication of another work, Descriptio regni Japoniee, 

 (Amst. 1649), to the senate of Hamburgh, Varenius says that he prose- 

 cuted his elementary mathematical studies in the gymnasium of that city. 

 There is, therefore, every reason to believe that this admirable geographer 

 v as a native of Germany, and was probably born at Luneburg, (Witten. 

 Mem. TheoL, 1685, p. 2142; Zedler, Universal-Lexicon, vol. XLVU, 

 1745, p. 187.) 



* Carl Ritter's Erdkunde im Verh'dltnis* zur Natur und zur Ge- 

 tchichte des MenscAen, oder allgemeine vergleichende Geographic (Geo- 



