z8 2 GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. 



almost entirely to the description of the earth, doubtless transcribed without 

 change the lessons which he had received from Master Peter ; but he notes 

 the errors of the ancient geographers, refutes the opinions of Pliny and 

 Ptolemy, and brings forward a host of fresh problems which science did not 

 solve till long after his time. Not only did he describe very accurately 

 regions not yet known and scarcely hinted at, but he further maintained 

 that Africa extended very far south, that it had inhabitants the other side of 

 the equator, that the temperature of the pole was endurable, that the Indian 

 Ocean washed the southern coasts of the Asiatic continent, and that the earth 

 was ten times more thickly peopled than was believed to be the case. 



At the time Bacon committed to paper, under Master Peter's dictation, 

 these ingenious theories which changed the face of geographical knowledge, 

 Albertus Magnus was propounding to attentive audiences numbered by the 

 thousand, from his chair in the University of Paris, a system of geography 

 stripped of all commentaries, and teeming with errors which he did not erase 

 when he embodied his public lessons in a treatise entitled "DeNatura Locorum." 



Roger Bacon appreciated in the following terms the utility and main 

 object of a science which was still groping its way in the dark : " Geography, 

 like astronomy and chronology, has its roots in mathematics, inasmuch as it 

 must repose upon the measurement and shape of the inhabited globe, and on 

 the precise determination of latitudes and longitudes. But the carelessness 

 of the Christian peoples is such that they do not know one-half of the globe 

 which they inhabit. Yet the first important points to be settled are the 

 measurement of the earth, the determining of the position of towns (Fig. 

 202) and of countries, and the adoption of a fixed degree for the longitudes, 

 starting from the western extremity of Spain to the eastern extremity of 

 India. This immense work can only be accomplished under the auspices of 

 the Holy Apostolic See, or of a monarch who would undertake all the costs 

 of the enterprise, by remunerating the savants employed upon it. Moreover, 

 it is impossible to form an opinion of men unless one knows what climate 

 they inhabit, for if the products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms are 

 dependent upon the climate, how much more must this be the case with the 

 manners, the character, and the constitutions of peoples !" Thus we see that 

 Roger Bacon's sagacity and spirit of intuition enabled him to anticipate by 

 five centuries the philosophical results of modern science. 



The thirteenth century could not but restore geography to its place of 



