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thence, how infufficient the fubtle fpeculations of the human 

 underftanding are towards fettling points like thefe, when totally 

 unaffiJted by the lights of obfervation, and actual experience. 



The divifion of the globe by zones being agreeable to na- 

 ture, the ancients diftinguiihed them very properly and accu- 

 rately into two frigid, the Arctic and Antarctic circles; two 

 temperate, lying between thofe circles and the tropics; and 

 the torrid zone within the tropics, equally divided by the equi- 

 noctial. But judging from their experience of the nature of the 

 climates at the extremities of the zone which they inhabited, 

 they concluded, that the frigid zones were utterly uninhabitable 

 from cold, and the torrid from intolerable heat of the Sun. 

 Pliny laments very pathetically upon this fuppofition, that the 

 race of mankind were pent up in fo fmall a part of the earth. 

 The poets, who were alfo no defpicable philofophers, heightened 

 the horrors of thefe inhofpitable regions by all the colouring of a 

 warm and heated imagination f ; but we now know, with the 

 utmofr. certainty, that they were entirely miftaken as to both. 

 For within the Arctic circle there are countries inhabited as high 

 nearly as we have difcovered ; and, if we may confide in the re- 

 lations of thofe who have been neareft the Pole g , the heat there is 



f Cicero in Somnium Scipionis. Virgil. Georg. lib. I. Ovidii Met. 

 lib. I. Tibullus Panegyr. ad MdFalam, lib. IV. Plin. Hilt. Natural, 

 lib. II. cap. 68. Pomp. Mela de Situ Orbis, lib. I. cap. i. Claudian. 

 de Raptu Proferpinse, lib. I. 



s That the earth had inhabitants even under the Poles, feems to have 

 been believed by many at the latter end of the 1 6th Century, from the 

 following lines : 



*' Fond men! if we believe that men do live 

 " Under the zenith of both frozen poles; 

 " Though none come thence advertifements to give, 

 " Why bear we not the like faith of our fouls. 



Sir John Davis's Nofce tc ipfum, 

 probably written in 1596, from a compliment to Lord Keeper Egerton 

 on his firft receiving the Great Seal. D. B. 



K very 



