190 EPOCHS IN THE HISTOEY OF THE CONTEMPLATION 



they imagined that they recognised in it under different 

 names whatever new places they discovered. In the same 

 manner that natural historians long attached to new found 

 plants and animals the marks of the classes of Linnseus, so 

 the earliest maps of the New Continent appeared in the atlas 

 of Ptolemy which Agathodsemon prepared, at the same time 

 that, in the farthest part of Asia, among the highly civilised 

 Chinese, the western provinces of the empire ( 295 ) were 

 already marked in forty-four divisions. The universal 

 geography of Ptolemy has, indeed, the merit of presenting to 

 us the whole of the ancient world graphically in outlines, 

 as well as numerically in positions assigned according to 

 longitude, latitude, and length of day; but often as he 

 affirms the superiority of astronomical results over itinerary 

 estimates by land or water, we are unfortunately without 

 any means of distinguishing among these assigned positions, 

 above 2500 in number, the nature of the foundation on 

 which each rests, or the relative probability which may be 

 ascribed to them according to the itineraries then existing. 



The entire ignorance of the polarity of the magnetic needle, 

 and of the use of the compass, which 1250 years before the 

 time of Ptolemy, under the Chinese emperor Tschingwang, 

 had been employed in the construction of " magnetic cars " 

 furnishing an index to the road to be followed, rendered 

 the most detailed itineraries of the Greeks and Romans 

 extremely uncertain, from a want of knowledge of the direc- 

 tion or angle with the meridian. ( 296 ) 



In the better knowledge which has recently been ob- 

 tained of the Indian and ancient Persian (or Zend) Ian- 

 guages, we are struck by the fact that a great part of 

 the geographical nomenclature of Ptolemy may be regarded 



