Chap. 78.] THE FIEST DIAL. 109 



consists of twelve wquinoctial hours and eight parts of an 

 hour', at Alexandria of fourteen hours, in Italy of fifteen, in 

 Britain of seventeen ; where the degree of light, which exists 

 in the night, very clearly proves, what the reason of the thing 

 also obliges us to believe, that, during the solstitial perioct 

 as the sun approaches to the polo of the world, and his orbit 

 is contractea, the parts of the earth that lie below him have 

 a day of six months long, and a night of equal length when 

 he is removed to the south pole. Pytheas, of Marseilles', 

 informs us, that this is the case in the island of Thule', which 

 is six days' sad from the north of Britain. Some persons 

 also aflRrm that this is the case in Mona, which is about 200 

 miles from Camelodunum^, a to\vTi of Britain. 



CHAP. 78. (76.) — OP THE PIBST DIAL. 



Anaximenes the Milesian, the disciple of Anaximander, 

 of whom I have spoken above', discovered the theory of 

 shadows and what is called the art of dialling, and he w^ 

 the first who exhibited at Lacedajmon the dial which they 

 call sciothericon*. 



* "Hora duodedm in partee, ut as in totidem undaa dividebotur. 

 Octonas igitur partes hone antiqiue, sive bessem, ut Martianus vooat, 

 nobis probe repreesentant hororum nostratium 40 sexagesinue, quas mi- 

 nutaa vocamus." Alexandre in Lemaire, i. 896. 



* For a notice of Pj-thoas see Lemaire, i. 210. Ho was a geographer 

 and historian who hved in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus ; but his 

 veracity does not ap^)ear to have been highly estimated by his oontem* 

 poraries. 



' The Thule of Pliny has been generally supposed to be the Shetland 

 Isles. What is here asserted respecting the length of the day, as well as 

 its distance from Britain, would inde«i apply much more correctly to 

 Iceland tiian to Shetland ; but we have no evidence that Iceland was 

 known to the ancients. Our author refers to the length of the day in 

 Thule in two subsequent parts of his work, iv. 30 and vi. 36. 



* Supposed to be Colchester in Essex ; while the Mona of Pliny appears 

 to have been Anglesea. It is not easy to conceive why the author 

 measured the distance of Mona from Camelodunum. 



« Chap. 6 of this book. 



* a (TKid, imibra, and Orjpdui, sector. It has been a subject for discussion 

 by the commentators, how iar this instrument of Anaximenes is entitled 

 to the appellation of a dial, whether it was intended to mark the hours, 

 or to serve for some other astronomical purpose. See Hardouin in 

 Lemaire, i. 398, 399. It has been correctly remarked by Brotier, that 

 we have an account of a much more ancient dial in the 2nd book of Einffs. 

 XX. 9, 11. ^ • 



