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NATURE 



\_Angust 12, 1880 



Herodotus, Mr. Bunbury thinks it extremely improbable, 

 but that it cannot be disproved. 



Neither Greeks nor Romans, as we have said, troubled 

 themselves much about exploration for its own sake; their 

 geographical knowledge, which after the time of Herodotus 

 accumulated at an increasing ratio, came to them mostly 

 through their military expeditions. The wars of Alexander 

 made vast additions to this knowledge, for he, like Csesar, 

 fond as he was of military glory, seems to have had a real 

 love of acquiring a knowledge of new lands and peoples. 

 Alexander brought within the sphere of fairly exact 

 knowledge much of Western, Central, and Southern Asia, 

 and the coast voyage, under his orders, of Nearchus from 

 the Indus to the Persian Gulf is a landmark in ancient 

 geography. Ciesar did for about one-half of Europe what 

 Alexander did for Asia, and the merits of the former as 

 an accurate observer are done ample justice to. The 

 extension of the Roman Empire, begun under Caesar, 

 was continued by his successors, and how vast had 

 been the strides in geographical knowledge during that 

 period is shown by the careful and full examinations 

 by Mr. Bunbury of the works of Strabo, Pliny, and 

 Ptolemy. 



Of the few genuine exploring expeditions of the ancient 

 world Mr. Bunbury writes at length and with his usual 

 caution and attention to accuracy and detail. The famous 

 voyage of Planno the Carthaginian, for example, along 

 the west coast of Africa, about the end of the sixth or early 

 part of the fifth century B.C., is done ample justice to, so 

 far as the meagre records admit. This enterprise, when 

 we consider the state of knowledge at the time and the 

 means at the command of the leader, deserves all the 

 praise that has been bestowed upon it. In a single 

 voyage this daring navigator accomplished what the 

 Portuguese of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries took 

 years to do. Mr. Bunbury is, we think, unusually suc- 

 cessful in identifying most of the points named and 

 clearing up the apparent difficulties in the brief existing 

 account of this voyage that has come down to us ; and 

 there is no doubt that Hanno succeeded in reaching as 

 far south as Sherboro, on the Sierra Leone coast, some- 

 thing like six degrees from the equator. Yet his example 

 does not seem to have stimulated any one to complete his 

 work. Pytheas is another well-known name in the 

 history of ancient geography, and a name that should 

 have a special interest for us, as he was the discoverer of 

 Britain to the cultured nations of the period. (It is 

 rather strange, by the by, that no enthusiastic geo- 

 grapher has ever suggested the appropriateness of 

 erecting a monument to the venturous Massilian.) Mr. 

 Bunbury rightly defends Pytheas from the attacks that 

 have been made upon his veracity, and, as in the case of 

 Herodotus, carefully distinguishes between what he states 

 as the results of his own experience and the information 

 he gives from the reports of others. It is not probable 

 that he ever left the mainland of Scotland. Mr. Bunbury 

 thinks it extremely difficult to identify the "Thule" of 

 Pytheas, "six days voyage to the north of Britain;" he 

 distinctly states that it belonged to the British group, 

 which would certainly seem to exclude Iceland. Pytheas 

 is well entitled to be considered a scientific observer ; 

 he added greatly to the knowledge which the Greeks had 

 of tidal phenomena, and as m.ight be expected was greatly 



struck with the astronomical phenomena of northern 

 latitudes. Pytheas, moreover, as we know, set up a 

 gnomon at his native town of Massilia, and thus deter- 

 mined the latitude of that place with a wonderful approach 

 to accuracy. 



Mr. Bunbury by no means devotes all his space to a 

 record of the gradual extension of a knowledge of the 

 earth's surface among the Greeks and Romans ; he gives 

 due attention to what is known as scientific geography, to 

 the attempts of philosophers to discover the form and 

 extent of the earth. At a comparatively early period it 

 was conjectured that the shape of the earth must be 

 spherical ; by the time of Aristotle indeed it had become 

 a generally received tenet among philosophers. Mr. 

 Bunbury, however, considers Eratosthenes (born B.C. 276), 

 the famous Alexandrine librarian, as the true parent of 

 scientific geography ; Strabo tells us that he made it the 

 object of his special attention to "reform the map of the 

 world" as it had existed down to his time, and to recon- 

 struct it upon more scientific principles. " The materials 

 at his command,'' Mr. Bunbury continues, " were still very 

 imperfect, and the means of scientific observation were 

 wanting to a degree which we can, at the present day, 

 scarcely figure to ourselves ; but the methods which he 

 pursued were of a strictly scientific character, and his judg- 

 ment was so sound that he proved in many instances to be 

 better informed and more judicious in his references than 

 geographers of two centuries later." Eratosthenes set 

 himself to make a careful measure of the magnitude of the 

 earth ; his method was thoroughly scientific, though the 

 data he had to start with were, as might be expected, 

 by no means accurate. Under the circumstances the 

 approximation he made to the measure of the earth's 

 circumference was really wonderful. Mr. Bunbury' s 

 discussion of the method and results of Eratosthenes 

 shows that he has mastered the scientific side of his 

 subject as well as the historical ; it is a fine example 

 of careful and close reasoning. For an account of 

 the work of Eratosthenes and other ancients in this 

 direction we refer the reader to the series of articles 

 on the Figure of the Earth in NATURE, vol. xviii. p. 356, 

 ct scq. 



After all, even in the time of Ptolemy, the map of the 

 world, after something like Soo years work, was of 

 comparatively limited extent. Anything like accurate 

 knowledge did not extend beyond Central and Southern 

 Europe, Western and South-western Asia on the one 

 side, and a small stretch of North Africa on the other. 

 True a vague knowledge was on record of regions far 

 beyond this, a knowledge however which had a vast 

 amount of error mixed with a small modicum of truth. 

 Still when we consider the limited means at the command 

 of the Greeks and Romans, and that they had to overcome 

 all the initial difficulties of the pursuit of knowledge, 

 the results which they achieved are creditable to their 

 enterprise. 



Mr. Bunbury' s history of these first beginnings of 

 geographical exploration and geographical science is well 

 worth a careful stud)', and will gain for him a high and 

 permanent position in the literature of geography. Not 

 the least valuable feature, we should say, are the nume- 

 rous map illustrations of the progress of geographical 

 knowledge at various periods. 



