the Deity is spoken of as the being who 'maketh Arcturus, Orion, and the chambers of the south,' is too striking to be overlooked.

6. Indeed, besides the motives of mere cu riosity, which of themselves may be supposed to have excited people to a contemplation of the glorious celestial canopy, it is easy to see that some parts of the science answer such essential purposes to mankind that they could not long be dispensed with. And it has been remarked that traces of this science, in different degrees of improvement, have been found among all nations.

7. Upon the building of the Tower of Babel, it is supposed that Noah retired with his children, born after the flood, to the north-eastern part of Asia, where his descendants peopled the vast empire of China. It is said also that the Jesuit missionaries have found traditional accounts among the Chinese of their having been taught this science by their first emperor Fo-hi, who is supposed to be the same with Noah; and Kempfer asserts that Fo-hi discovered the motions of the heavens, divided time into years and months, and invented the twelve signs, into which they divide the zodiac, and which they distinguish by the following names: 1. the mouse; 2. the ox or cow; 3. the tiger; 4. the hare; 5. the dragon; 6. the serpent; 7. the horse; 8. the sheep; 9. the monkey; 10. the cock or hen; 11. the dog; and 12. the boar. They divide the heavens into twenty-eight constellations, or classes of stars, allotting four to each of the seven planets; so that the year always begins with the same planet; and their constellations answer to the twenty-eight lunar mansions used by the Arabian astronomers.

8. They do not, however, mark these constellations with the figures of animals, like most other nations, but by connecting the stars by straight lines, and denoting the stars themselves by small circles: so, for instance, the great bear would be marked as represented in plate IV. fig. 9.

9. The Chinese themselves have many records of the high antiquity of their astronomy; though not without suspicion of great mistakes. They ascribe the discovery of the pole-star, the invention of the sphere, and mariners' compass, &c. to their emperor Hong-Ti, the grandson of Noah. But on more certain authority it is asserted by Gaubil that, at least 120 years before Christ, the Chinese had determined by observation the number and extent of their constellations as they now stand; the situation of the fixed stars with respect to the equinoctial and solstitial points; and the obliquity of the ecliptic, with the theory of eclipses; and that they were, long before that, acquainted with the true length of the solar year, the method of observing meridian altitudes of the sun by the shadow of a gnomon, and of deducing from thence his declination and the height of the pole.

10. The same missionary also says that the Chinese have yet remaining some books of astronomy which were written about 200 years before Christ; from which it appears that the Chinese knew the daily motion of the sun and moon, and the time of the revolutions of the planets, many years before that period. Du

Halde informs us that Tcheou-cong, the most skilful astronomer that ever China produced lived more than a thousand years before Christ, that he passed whole nights in observing the celestial bodies and arranging them into constellations, &c. At present, however, the state of astronomy is but very low in that country, although it is cultivated at Pekin by public authority, as in most of the capital cities of Europe. This is ascribed, by Dr. Long, to a barbarous decree of one of their emperors, to burn all the books in the empire excepting such as related to agriculture and medicine.

11. Astronomy, according to Porphyry, must have been of very ancient standing in the East. He informs us that when Babylon was taken by Alexander there were brought from thence celestial observations for the space of 1903 years; which therefore must have commenced within 115 years after the flood, or within fifteen years after the building of Babel. Epigenes, according to Pliny, affirmed that the Babylonians had observations of 720 years engraven on bricks.

12. Achilles Tatius ascribes the invention of astronomy to the Egyptians; and adds that their knowledge of that science was engraven on pillars, and by that means transmitted to posterity. Bailly, in his elaborate History of Ancient and Modern Astronomy, endeavours to trace the origin of this science among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Persians, Indians, and Chinese, to a very early period; and he maintains that it was cultivated in Egypt and Chaldea 2800 years before Christ; in Persia, 3209; in India, 3101; and in China, 2952 years before that era. He also apprehends that astronomy had been studied even long before this distant period, and that we are only to date its revival from thence.

13. M. Bailly, in investigating the antiquity and progress of astronomy among the Indians, examines and compares four sets of astronomical tables of the Indian philosophers, viz. that of the Siamese, explained by M. Cassini in 1689; that brought from India by M. le Gentil, of the Academy of Sciences; and two other manuscript tables, found among the papers of M. de Lisle: all of which agree together, and refer to the meridian of Benares. It appears that the fundamental epoch of the Indian astronomy is a conjunction of the sun and moon which took place at the distance of years 3102 A. A. C. And M. Bailly computes that such a conjunction really then happened.

14. He farther observes that at present the Indians calculate eclipses from observations made 5000 years ago; the accuracy of which, with regard to the solar motion, far exceeds that of the best Grecian astronomers. The lunar motions have been computed from the space through which that luminary passes in 1,600,984 days. They also use the cycle of nineteen years, the same as that ascribed by the Greeks to Meton. Their theory of the planets is better than that of Ptolemy, as they do not suppose the earth to be the centre of the celestial motions, and believe that Venus and Mercury move round the sun. Their astronomy also agrees with the most modern discoveries, with regard to the obliquity of the ecliptic and the acceleration of the

equinoctial points, &c. The inhabitants of Japan, of Siam, and of the Mogul's empire, have also been acquainted with astronomy from time immemorial; and the celebrated observatory at Benares is a monument both of the ingenuity of the Hindoos, and of their skill in that science.

15. In the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. ii, professor Playfair has given a learned and ingenious dissertation on the astronomy of the Brahmins, in which the great accuracy and high antiquity of the science among them is rendered extremely probable. It appears that their tables and rules of computation have peculiar reference to an epoch, and to observations 3000 or 4000 years A. C. It appears, too, that very considerable mathematical knowledge had been employed in their precepts and calculations. But amongst all these precepts and those calculations, perhaps none will strike the mind of the reader with greater force than the following, from which we shall find, without plucking a leaf from the never-fading laurels of Sir Isaac Newton, that the principle which he developed to the western world, was discovered by the philosophers of the eastern, thousands of years before he existed: of the truth of this the following remarkable passage, translated by Sir William Jones, from the poem of Shirin and Ferhad: there is,' says the author of that poem, a strong propensity which dances through every atom and attracts the minutest particle to some peculiar object; from such propensity arises every motion perceived in heavenly or terrestrial bodies. It is a disposition to be attracted which taught hard steel to rush from its place and rivet itself on the magnet; it is the same disposition which impels the light straw to attach itself firmly on amber.'

16. We shall conclude this part of the history of Asiatic discoveries in the words of professor Playfair: That observations made in India, when all Europe was barbarous or unininhabited, and investigations into the most subtle effects of gravitation made in Europe near five thousand years afterwards, should thus come in mutual support of one another, is perhaps the most striking example of the progress and vicissitudes of science, which the history of mankind has yet exhibited.'

17. It appears too, that astronomy was not unknown to the Americans; though in their division of time they made use only of the solar and not of the lunar motions. The Mexicans, in particular, had a strange predilection for the number thirteen: their shortest periods consisted of thirteen days; their cycle of thirteen months, each containing twenty days; and their epoch of four periods of thirteen years each. This excessive veneration for the number thirteen arose, according to Siguenza, from its being the number of their greater gods. Clavigero also asserts it as a fact, that having discovered the excess of a few hours in the solar above the lunar year, they made use of intercalary days to bring them to an equality, as was done by Juhus Cæsar in the Roman calendar-but with this difference, that instead of one day every four years, they interposed thirteen days every fifty-two years.

18. Among the ancients we find the name of Chaldean used often for astronomer or astrologer. Indeed both these nations pretended to a very high antiquity, and claimed the honor of producing the first cultivators of this science. The Chaldeans boasted of their temple or tower of Belus, and of Zoroaster, whom they placed 5000 years before the destruction of Troy; while the Egyptians boasted of their colleges of priests, where astronomy was taught, and of the monument of Osymandias, in which, it is said, there was a golden circle of 365 cubits in circumference, and one cubit thick, divided into 365 equal parts, according to the days of the year, &c. It is indeed evident that both Chaldea and Egypt were countries very proper for astronomical observations, on account of the extended flatness of the country, and the purity and serenity of the air. The tower of Belus, or of Babel itself, was probably an astronomical observatory; and the pyramids of Egypt, whatever they were originally designed for, might perhaps answer the same purpose; at least they show the skill of this people in practical astronomy, as they are all placed with their four fronts exactly facing the cardinal points of the compass.

19. The Chaldeans began to make observations soon after the confusion of languages, as appears from the observations found by Alexander on the taking of Babylon; and it is probable they began much earlier. They determined, with tolerable exactness, the length both of a periodical and synodical month. They discovered that the motion of the moon was not uniform; and they even attempted to assign those parts of the orbit in which the motion is quicker or slower. We are assured by Ptolemy that they were not unacquainted with the motion of the moon's apogee and nodes, the latter of which they supposed made a complete revolution in 65854 days, or a little more than eighteen years, and contained 223 complete lunations, which period is called the Chaldean Saros.

20. Ptolemy also gives us from Hipparchus several observations of lunar eclipses made at Babylon above 720 years A. A. C.; and Aristotle informs us that they had many occultations of the planets and fixed stars by the moon; a circumstance which led them to conceive that eclipses of the sun were to be attributed to the same cause. They had also no inconsiderable share in arranging the stars into constellations, and the comets did not escape their observation. Dialling was also practised among them long before the Greeks were acquainted with that science.

21. The Egyptians were much of the same standing in astronomy with the Chaldeans. Herodotus ascribes their knowledge in the science to Sesostris; but probably not the same whom Newton makes contemporary with Solomon, as the y were acquainted with astronomy at least many hundred years before that era. We learn from the testimony of some ancient authors, that they believed the figure of the earth was spherical; that the moon was eclipsed by passing through the earth's shadow, though it does not certainly appear that they had any knowledge of the tru system of the universe; that they attempted to measure the magnitude of the earth and s.,

though their methods of ascertaining the latter were very erroneous; and that they even pretended to foretel the appearance of comets, as well as earthquakes and inundations. This science, however, gradually decayed, and in the time of Augustus it was entirely extinct among them.

22. Astronomy passed from Chaldea and Egypt to the Phoenicians, and was applied by that commercial people to the purposes of navigation; and they, in consequence, became masters of the sea, and of almost all the commerce in the world. The Greeks, it is probable, derived their astronomical knowledge chiefly from the Egyptians and Phoenicians, by means of several of their countrymen who visited these nations for the purpose of learning the different sciences. Newton supposes that the division into constellations was made about the time of the Argonautic expedition; but it is probable that most of them were of a much older date, and derived from other nations, though clothed in fables of their own in

vention.

23. The fable of Atlas supporting the heavens upon his shoulders, shows that some Mauritanian monarch of that name had made considerable advances in astronomical knowledge; and his discoveries had probably been communicated to the Greeks. Several of the constellations are mentoned by Hesiod and Homer, who lived about A. A. C. 870. Their knowledge in this science however, was greatly improved by Thales the Milesian, and other Greeks, who travelled into Egypt, and brought from thence the chief principles of the science. Thales was born about A. A. C. 640, and he was the first among the Greeks who observed the stars, the solstices, and predicted the eclipses of the sun and moon.

24. The science was farther cultivated and extended by his successors Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Anaxagoras; but especially by Pythagoras, who, about A. A. C. 577, brought from Egypt the learning of these people, taught it in Greece and Italy, and founded the sect of the Pythagoreans. He taught that the sun was in the centre of the universe; that the earth was round; that there were antipodes; that the moon reflected the rays of the sun, and was inhabited like the earth; that comets were a kind of wandering stars, disappearing in the further parts of their orbits; that the white color of the milky way was owing to the united brightness of a great multitude of small stars; and he supposed that the distances of the moon and planets from the earth, were in certain harmonic proportions to one another.

25. Philolaus, a Pythagorean, who flourished about A. A. C. 450, and asserted the diurnal motion of the earth on its own axis, was taught by Hicetas, a Syracusan. About the same time Meton and Euctemon flourished at Athens, where they observed the summer solstice, A. A. C. 432, with the risings and settings of the stars, and what seasons they answered to. Meton also invented the cycle of nineteen years, which still bears his name.

26. Eudoxus, of Cnidos, lived about A. A. C. 370, and was one of the most skilful astronomers and geometricians of antiquity, and the supposed Liventor of many of the propositions in Euclid's

Elements. He introduced geometry into the science of astronomy, and travelled into Asia, Africa, Sicily, and Italy, to improve it: and we are informed by Pliny, that he determined the annual year to contain 365 days 6 hours, and also the periodical time of the planets, and made other important discoveries and observations. Calippus flourished soon after Eudoxus, and his celestial sphere is mentioned by Aristotle; but he is better known by a period of seventy-six years which he invented, containing four corrected Metonic periods, and which commenced at the summer solstice, A. A. C. 330. About this time the knowledge of the Pythagorean system was carried into Italy, Gaul, and Egypt, by certain colonies of Greeks.

27. Vitruvius, however, represents the introduction of astronomy into Greece, in a manner somewhat different. He maintains that Berosus, a Babylonian, brought it immediately from Babylon itself, and opened an astronomical school in the isle of Cos. And Pliny says, that, in consideration of his wonderful predictions, the Athenians erected a statue to him in the gymnasium, with a gilded tongue. But if this Berosus be the same with the author of the Chaldaic histories, he must have lived before Alexander. About this time, or rather earlier, the Greeks having begun to plant colonies in Italy, Gaul, and Egypt, became acquainted with the Pythagorean system, and the notions of the ancient druids concerning astronomy. Julius Caesar informs us that the latter were skilled in this science; and that the Gauls in general were able sailors, which they could not be without a competent knowledge of astronomy; and it is related of Pytheas, who lived at Marseilles in the time of Alexander the Great, that he observed the altitude of the sun at the summer solstices by means of a gnomon. He is also said to have travelled as far as Thule to settle the climates.

28. After Alexander's death the sciences flourished chiefly in Egypt, under the auspices of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and his successors. He founded a school there, which continued till the invasion of the Saracens, A. A. C. 650. From the founding of that school, the science of astronomy advanced considerably. Aristarchus, about A. A. C. 270, strenuously asserted the Pythagorean system, and gave a method of determining the sun's distance by the dichotomy of the moon.-Eratosthenes, who was born at Cyrene A. A. C. 271, measured the circumference of the earth by a gnomon; and being invited to Alexandria, from Athens, by Ptolemy Euergetes, and made keeper of the royal library there, he set up for that prince those armillary spheres, which Hipparchus and Ptolemy the astronomer afterwards employed so successfully in observing the heavens. He also determined the distance between the tropics to be of the whole meridian circle, which makes the obliquity of the ecliptic in his time to be 23° 51′ .

29. The celebrated Archimedes, too, cultivated astronomy, as well as geometry and mechanics, determined the distances of the planets from one another; and constructed a kind of planetarium or orrery, to represent the phenomena and motions of the heavenly bodies.

30. Not to mention many others of the ancients who cultivated astronomy, Hipparchus, who flourished about A. A. C. 140, was the first who applied himself to the study of every branch of that science. Ptolemy says he made great improvements in it; he discovered that the orbits of the planets are eccentric, that the moon moved slower in her apogee than in her perigee, and that there was a motion of anticipation of the moon's nodes: he constructed tables of the motions of the sun and moon, collected accounts of such eclipses, &c. as had been made by the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and calculated all that were to happen for 600 years: he discovered that the fixed stars changed their places, having a slow motion of their own from west to east; he corrected the Calippic period, and pointed out some errors in Eratosthenes's method for measuring the circumference of the earth; he computed the sun's distance more accurately than his predecessors: but his best work is a catalogue of the fixed stars, to the number of 1022, with their longitudes, latitudes, and apparent magnitudes; which, with most of his other observations, are preserved by Ptolemy in his Almagest.

31. From the time of Hipparchus, till that of Ptolemy, little progress was made in astronomy. He was born at Pelusium, in Egypt, in the first century, and made the greatest part of his observations at the celebrated school of Alexandria in that country. Profiting by those of Hipparchus, and other ancient astronomers, he formed a system of his own, which, though erroneous, was implicitly followed for many ages by all nations. He compiled a great work, called the Almagest, which contained the observations and collections of his predecessors in astronomy. This work was preserved from the conflagration of the Alexandrian library by the Saracens, and translated into Arabic, A. D. 827, and into Latin in 1230. The Greek original was not known in Europe till the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it was brought from Constantinople, then taken by the Turks, by a monk of Trapezond, named George, who translated it into Latin; and various other editions have been since made.

32. From A. D. 800, till the beginning of the fourteenth century, the western parts of Europe were immersed in gross ignorance, while the Arabians, profiting by the books they had preserved from the wreck of the Alexandrian library, cultivated and improved all the sciences, and particularly that of astronomy, in which they had many able professors and authors. The caliph Al Mansur first introduced a taste for the sciences into his empire. His grandson, Al Mamun, who ascended the throne in 814, was a great encour ager and improver of the sciences, especially of astronomy. Having constructed proper instruments, he made many observations; determined the obliquity of the ecliptic to be 23° 35; and under his auspices a degree of the circle of the earth was measured a second time in the plain of Singar, on the border of the Red Sea.

33. About this time Alferganus wrote elements of astronomy; and Albategnius, who flourished about the year 880, greatly reformed it, by comparing his own observations with those of Ptolemy. Hence he computed the motion of the

sun's apogee from Ptolemy's time to his own; settled the precession of the equinoxes at one degree in seventy years; and fixed the obliquity of the ecliptic at 23° 35'. The tables which he composed for the meridian of Aracta, were long esteemed by the Arabians.

34. After this, though the Saracens had many eminent astronomers, several centuries elapsed without producing any very valuable observations, excepting those of some eclipses observed by Ebn Younis, astronomer to the caliph of Egypt, by means of which the quantity of the moon's acce leration since that time may be determined. Other eminent Arabic astronomers were Arzachel, a Moor of Spain, who observed the obliquity of the ecliptic, and improved trigonometry by constructing tables of sines, instead of chords of arches, dividing the diameter into 300 equal parts. Alhazen his contemporary, wrote upon the twilight, the height of the clouds, the phænomenon of the horizontal moon, and first showed the importance of the theory of refractions in astronomy.

35. Ulug Beg, grandson of the celebrated Tamerlane, the Tartarian prince, a great proficient in practical astronomy, had very large instruments, particularly a quadrant of about 180 feet high, with which he made good observations. From these he determined the latitude of Samarcand, his capital, to be 39° 27′ 23′′; and composed astronomical tables for the meridian of the same so exact, that they differ very little from those constructed afterwards by Tycho Brahe.— His principal work was his catalogue of the fixed stars, made from his own observations in the year 1437.

36. At this period, almost all Europe was immersed in ignorance; which began to be dispelled by the settlement of the Moors in Spain. The emperor Frederic II. about 1230, also began to encourage learning; restoring some decayed universities, founding a new one in Vienna; and causing the works of Aristotle and Ptolemy's Almagest, to be translated into Latin. Two years after this, John de Sacro Bosco, that is of Halifax, compiled from Ptolemy, Albategnius, Alferganus, and other Arabic astronomers, his work, De Sphæra, which was held in the greatest estimation for 300 years after, and was honored with commentaries by Clavius and other learned men.

37. In 1240 Alphonso, king of Castile, not only cultivated astronomy himself but greatly encouraged others; and by the assistance of several learned men corrected the tables of Ptolemy, and composed those which were denominated from him the Alphonsine tables. About the same time Roger Bacon, an English monk, wrote several tracts relative to astronomy, particularly of the lunar aspects, the solar rays, and the places of the fixed stars; and about 1270 Vitello, a Polander, composed a treatise on optics, in which he showed the use of refractions in astronomy.

38. Till the time of Purbach, who was born in 1423, little farther improvement was made in this science. He composed new tables of sines for every ten minutes, making the radius sixty, with four cyphers annexed. He constructed spheres and globes, and wrote several astronomical tracts, as a commentary on Ptolemy's Alma