242 Epitome of the Progress of Natural Science. 



Newton. The important contributions which Professors Buck- 

 land and Sedgewick have made to this, the most attractive sci- 

 ence of modern times, can never be forgotten by those who com- 

 memorate its early history, and the great and beneficial impulse 

 which it has received from that school, of which they are among 

 the chief ornaments. But* that we may the more intelligently 

 bring that early history before our readers, we shall, in con- 

 formity with the plan hitherto pursued, rapidly notice the suc- 

 cessive steps, by which the study of physical science has been 

 promoted from the earliest times ; by which means the true cau- 

 ses of the retardment and advance of a branch of knowledge, 

 will more conspicuously and profitably appear ; which, as has 

 been remarked by Mr. Lyell, stands in that relation to the phy- 

 sical sciences, which general history does to the moral. 



In the early pages of this Epitome, we have adverted to the 

 ancient cosmogonies, and to the rise of philosophy in Greece. 

 Pythagoras, who flourished near five hundred years B. C, appears 

 to have had very just ideas of the true theory of the solar system ; 

 he even proved that the earth was not an extended plane, but 

 that it had a curvature. The elementary principles of geome- 

 try, from the necessity of the case, became known to men in 

 the infancy of society, and Pythagoras is the most celebrated of 

 the ancient geometricians ; but the geometrical analysis, or the 

 art of finding unknown quantities, by their relation to quantities 

 that are known, became familiar to the Greeks at a later day. 

 Although mathematics did not begin to flourish in Greece until 

 philosophy and the arts had reached their height, yet geometry 

 was well known there, before the period of those great mathe- 

 maticians Euclid and Archimedes, who flourished about the 

 third century B. C. Amongst the great astronomers of that time 

 was Aristarchus, who taught the true solar theory ; and Hippar- 

 chus, who flourished about one hundred and forty-two years B. C, 

 was so familiar with the heavens, that he undertook the enumera- 

 tion of the stars. The ancients were familiar with the mechanical 

 powers, sufficiently to have used them on a great scale, yet until 



from cell to cell. At a later day Galileo was condemned by men, whoss names are 

 now only remembered as parts of the rubbish upon which the pedestal of his fame is 

 raised. And in our own times there are men who seek to raise the cry of ' No con- 

 jurer' against me, I tell you, you will soon find out, these good people are no con- 

 jurers themselves." 



