260 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION OP 



mathematical and astronomical knowledge, every thing was 

 gradually prepared for the great geographical achievements, 

 which have distinguished the close of the fifteenth and the 

 early portion of the sixteenth centuries, or the thirty years 

 from 1492 to 1522, namely, the discovery of tropical 

 America, the rapid determination of its form, the passage 

 round the southern point of Africa to India, arid the first 

 circumnavigation of the globe. Men's minds were also 

 stimulated and rendered more acute to receive the immense 

 accession of new phenomena, to work out the results of what 

 was thus obtained, and by their comparison to render them 

 available for the formation of higher and more general views 

 of the physical Universe. 



It will suffice to allude here to a few only of the principal 

 elements of these higher views, which were capable of con- 

 ducting men to a farther insight into the connection of the 

 phenomena of the globe. In a careful study of the original 

 works of the earliest historians of the Conquista, we often 

 discover with astonishment in the Spanish writers of the 

 sixteenth century the germ of important physical truths. 

 At the sight of a continent in the wide waste of waters far 

 removed from other lands, many of the important questions 

 which occupy us in the present day presented themselves to 

 tlie awakened curiosity both of the first voyagers and of those 

 who collected their narrations; questions respecting the 

 unity of the human race, and its deviations from a common 

 normal type ; the migrations of nations, and the relationship 

 of languages which often shew greater differences in their 

 radical words than in their flexions or grammatical forms ; 

 the possibility of the migration of particular species of plants 

 or animals ; the cause of the trade winds, and of the constant 



