276 COSMOS 



the Middle Ages were to be regarded iess as the result of act- 

 ual observation than as mere compilations, reflecting the opin- 

 ions of classical antiquity. Two of the greatest men of the 

 sixteenth century, Conrad Gesner and Andreas Csesalpinus, 

 have the high merit of having opened a new path to zoology 

 and botany. 



In order to give a more vivid idea of the early influence 

 exercised by oceanic discoveries on the enlarged sphere of the 

 physical and astronomical sciences connected with navigation, 

 I will call attention, at the close of this description, to some lu- 

 minous points, which we may already see glimmering through 

 the writings of Columbus. Their first faint light deserves to 

 be traced with so much the more care, because they contain 

 the germs of general cosmical views. I will not pause here 

 to consider the proofs of the results which I have enumerated, 

 since I have given them in detail in another work, entitled 

 Eocamen Critique de VHistoire de la Geographie du Nou- 

 veau Continent et des JProgres de VAstronomie Nautique 

 aux XV® et xvi^ Siecles. But, in order to avoid the imputa- 

 tion of undervaluing the views of modern physical knowledge, 

 in comparison with the observations of Columbus, I will give 

 the literal translation of a few lines contained in a letter which 

 the admiral wrote from Haiti in the month of October, 1498 

 He writes as follows : " Each time that I sail from Spain to 

 India, as soon as I have proceeded about a hundred nautical 

 miles to the west of the Azores, I perceive an extraordinary 

 alteration in the movement of the heavenly bodies, in the tem- 

 perature of the air, and in the character of the sea. I have 

 observed these alterations with especial care, and I notice that 

 the mariner's compass (agujas de marear), whose declination 

 had hitherto been northeast, was now changed to northwest ; 

 and when I had crossed this line (raya), as if in passing the 

 brow of a hill {como quien traspone una cuesta), 1 found the 

 ocean covered by such a mass of sea weed, similar to small 

 branches of pine covered with pistachio nuts, that we were 

 apprehensive that, for want of a sufficiency of water, our ships 

 would run upon a shoal. Before we reached the line of which 

 I speak, there was no trace of any such sea weed. On the 

 boundary line, one hundred miles west of the Azores, the ocean 

 becomes at once still and calm, being scare, V ever moved by 

 a breeze. On my passage from the Canary Islands to the 

 parallel of Sierra Leone, we had to endure a frightful degree 

 of heat, but, as soon as we had crossed the above-mentioned 

 line (to the west of the meridian of the Azores), the climate 



