Till CONTENTS. 



Page 



The conjectured discovery of America by the Irish 607 



The efforts of missionaries 608 



The traces of Gaelic supposed to be met with in American dialects 609 



The re-discovery of America by Columbus 612 



The discovery of tropical America 614 



Albertus Magnus, Bacon, and Vincenzius of Beauvais 615 



Kealistsand Nominalists 617 



fhe encyclopaedic works of the fifteenth century 620 



The revival of Greek literature 622 



Important events in Asia 624 



Early travellers 625 



Marco Polo's narratives 626 



Use of the magnetic needle 628 



The supposed inventor of the mariner's compass 629 



Application of astronomy to navigation 630 



Martyr de Anghiera 635 



The charts consulted by Columbus 638 



The characteristics of Columbus 639 



The discovery and navigation of the Pacific 643 



The first circumnavigation of the earth 647 



The Conquistadores 648 



The discovery of the Sandwich Islands, &c 649 



Spanish travellers in the new continent 651 



Papal line of demarcation 655 



Line without magnetic variation 656 



The magnetic pole 659 



The line of perpetual snow 660 



The equatorial current 662 



The first descriptions of the southern constellations 664 



The coal-bags and the Magellanic clouds 665 



The southern cross .' 666 



The determination of the ship's place 67C 



The age of the Conquista 675 



VII. Great discoveries in the Heavens 681-737 



The telescope 681 



The seventeenth century 682 



Nicolaus Copernicus 683 



The different stages of the development of cosmical contemplation 689 



The theory of eccentric intercalated spheres 697 



The great men of the sevententh century 698 



The accidental discovery of the telescope 699 



Telescopic discoveries 702 



The discovery of Jupiter's satellites 704 



The spots upon the sun 706 



Galileo , 708 



Kepler 709 



The zodiacal light , 712 



