THE UNIVERSE. OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 277 



fanciful were the interpretations first attached to these 

 remains. 



During this active period,, the enlargement of cosmical views 

 was promoted by the immediate contact of numerous bodies 

 of Europeans, not only with the free aspect and grand features 

 of nature in the mountains and plains of America, but also 

 (in consequence of the successful navigation of Vasco de 

 Gama) with the eastern coast of Africa, and with India. As 

 early as the commencement of the sixteenth century, a 

 Portuguese physician, Garcia de Orta, to whom the Muse 

 of Camoens has paid a patriotic tribute of praise, established, 

 on the present site of Bombay, and under the auspices of the 

 noble Martin Alfonso de Sousa, a botanic garden in which he 

 cultivated the medicinal plants of the vicinity. The impulse 

 to direct and independent observation was now every where 

 awakened, whilst the cosmographic writings of the middle 

 ages were rather compilations, reproducing the opinions of 

 classical antiquity, than the results of personal observation. 

 Two of the greatest men of the sixteenth century, Conrad 

 Gesner and Andreas Csesalpinus, honourably opened a new 

 path in zoology and botany. 



In order to afford a more lively idea of the early influence 

 which the oceanic discoveries exercised on the enlargement 

 of physical and astro-nautical knowledge, I will call attention 

 at the close of this description to some bright points of light 

 which we see already glimmering in the writings of Columbus. 

 Their first feeble ray is the more deserving of careful regard 

 because they contained the germ of general cosmical views. 

 I pass over the proofs of the results here presented to my 

 readers, because I have already given them in detail in an 

 earlier work, entitled " Critical examination of the historic de- 



