OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 637 



Azores, through a wholly unexplored ocean, and applying the 

 newly improved astrolabe, for the determination of the 

 ship's place, sought eastern Asia by a western course, not as 

 a mere adventurer, but under the guidance of a systematic 

 plan. He certainly had with him the sea-chart which the 

 Florentine physician and astronomer, Paolo Toscanelli, had 

 sent him in 1477, and which, fifty-three years after his death, 

 was still in the possession of Bartholomew de las Casas.* It 



enlargement of geography at that epoch, that, amidst the confusion and 

 tiie feebleness of the physical explanations which prevail almost equally 

 In both collections, the greater part of these problems relate to compa- 

 rative meteorology. I allude to the cDnsiderations on the warm insular 

 climate of England contrasted with the winter at Milan ; on the depend- 

 ence of hail on electric explosions; on the cause and direction of 

 oceanic currents; on the maxima of atmospheric heat and cold occurring 

 after the summer and winter solstices; on the elevation of the region of 

 snow under the tropics; on the temperature dependent on the radiation 

 of heat from the sun and from all the heavenly bodies ; on the greater 

 intensity of light in the southern hemisphere, &c. " Cold is merely 

 absence of heat. Light and heat are only different in name, and are in 

 themselves inseparable." Cardani Opp., t. i. de vita propria, p. 40; 

 t. ii. Probl. 621, 630-632, 653, and 713; t. iii. de subtilitate, p. 417. 



* See my Examen crit., t. ii. pp. 210-249. According to the manu- 

 script, Historia general de las Indias, lib. i. cap. 12, "la carta de 

 marear que Maestro Paulo Fisico (Toscanelli) envio a Colon/' was in 

 the hands of Bartholome de las Casas when he wrote his work. Colum- 

 bus' ship's journal, of which we possess an extract (Navarrete, t. i., 

 p. 13), does not entirely agree with the relation which I find in a manu- 

 script of Las Casas, for a communication of which I am indebted to M. 

 Ternaux-Compans. The ship's journal says, "Iba hablando el Almi- 

 rante (martes 25 de Setiembre, 1492), con Martin Alonso Pinzon, 

 capitan de la otra carabela Pinta, sobra una carta que le habia enviado 

 tres dias hacia a la carabela, donde segun parece tenia pintados el 



Almirante ciertas islas por aquella mar " In the manuscript 



f Las Casas (lib. i. cap. 12), we find, on the other hand, as follows : 

 " La carta de marear que embio (Toscanelli al Almirante,) yo que esta 

 historia escrivo la tengo en mi poder. Creo qua todo su viage sobre esta 

 carta fund6" (lib. i. cap. 38) ; " asi fue que el martes 25 de Setiembre, 

 llegase Martin Alonzo Pinzon con su caravela Pinta a hablar con Chris- 

 tobal Colon, sobre una carta de marear que Christobal Colon le avia 



embiado Esta carta es la que lesmbio Paulo Fisico el Florentin 



la qual yo tengo en mi poder con otras cosas del Almirante y escrituras 

 de su misma ma.no que traxeron d mi poder. En ella le pinto mucJtaa 



islas " Are we to assume that the Admiral had drawn upon 



the map of Toscanelli, the islands which he expected to reach, or would 

 " tenia pintadas" merely mean that " the Admiral had a map on vhict 

 these were painted . . . . f ' 



