Xll NOTES. 



islands are regarded by Varenius as the "raised bottom of the sea;" magna 

 spirituura inclusorem vi, sicut aliquando montes e terra protrusos esse quidam 

 scribunt (p. 215). The edition of 1681, by Newton ("auctior et emenda- 

 tior"), contains unfortunately no additions from the pen of the great master. 

 The spheroidal figure and compression of the earth are no where mentioned, 

 although Richer's Pendulum Experiments are nine years older than the 

 Cambridge edition : Newton's Principia were first communicated to the Royal 

 Society of London, in manuscript, in April 1686. There is much uncertainty 

 as to the native country of Varenius. According to Jocher, he was born in 

 England; according to the Biographic Universelle (T. xlvii. p. 495), 

 in Amsterdam: but both suppositions are shewn to be erroneous by the 

 dedication of his General Geography to a Burgomaster of Amsterdam, in 

 which he says expressly, " that he had sought refuge in that city, his own 

 native town having been laid in ashes and entirely destroyed during the long 

 war." These words seem to indicate Northern Germany, and the devasta- 

 tions of the Thirty Years' War. Moreover, Varenius remarks, in the dedi- 

 cation of his Descriptio Regni Japonise (Amst. 1649) to the Senate of 

 Hamburgh, that he had made his first mathematical studies in the Hamburgh 

 Gymnasium. There is little or no reason to doubt that this admirable 

 geographer was a German, and a native of Liineburg. (Witten, Mem. Theol. 

 1685, p. 2142 ; Zedler, Universal-Lexikon, Th. xlvi. 1745, S. 187.) 



C 26 ) p. 54. Carl Ritter's Erdkunde im Verhaltniss zur Natur und zur 

 Geschichte des Menschen, oder allgemeine vergleichende Geographie. 



() p. 56. Koir/ios, in its most ancient and proper signification, was 

 merely " ornament" (as belonging either to the dress of men and women, of 

 to the caparison of horses) ; figuratively, it implied "order," for eurata, at <l 

 ornament of speech. The ancients are unanimous in affirming that Pythagons 

 was the first who employed the word to signify " order of the universe," or 

 World or "Universe itself. As he left no writings, the oldest passages in evi- 

 dence of this are the fragments of Philolaus (Stob. Eclog. pp. 360 and 460; 

 Heeren, Philolaos von Bockh, S. 62 und 90). I do not, with Niilce, adduce 

 Timseus of Locris, because his authenticity is doubtful. Plutarch (De Plac. 

 Phil. ii. 1) says decidedly that Pythagoras first called the Universe Kosmos t 

 because of the order which reigns throughout it; also Galen, Hist. Phil, 

 p. 429.) The word with its new signification passed from the philosophic 

 school into the language of poets of nature and of prose writers. Piato 

 continues to designate celestial bodies as Uranos, but he too calls the order 

 of the universe Kosmos ; and. in Timaeus (p. 30, B) the universe is called 



