RENNEL, JAMES, a well-known English geographer, was b. near Chndleigh, Devon shire, 1742, and entered the navy as a midshipman at the age of 15, distinguishing himself under admiral Parker at the siege of Pondicherry. At the age of 24 lie left the navy, and enlisted as an officer of engineers in the East India company's army, rising through the influence of his distinguished services under Clive to the grade of maj. Soon afterward he was transferred to the post of surveyor-general of Bengal, an office more in keeping with his tastes. While serving in the army he had prepared and published a Chart of the Bank and Currents of Cape Agulhas (1768), which attracted the general notice of geographers; and having retired from office (1782) with a pension of £600, he followed up this work by a succession of geographical works on India, the chief of which was Memoirs of a Nap of Hindustan (Loud. 1783), new editions of which appeared in 1788, 1793, and 1800, each of which merits to he considered a distinct work. But his geographical investigations took a wider scope, for in 1792 he published'a Memoir of the Geography ef Africa, from the communications of maj. Houghton, and the relations of Ledyard and Hornemaun; and in 1798 he aided Mingo Park in the arrangement of his travels, illustrating them by a map. Rennet had been elected a member of the royal society in 1788. The subject of the correctness of the ancient geographers being at that time much discussed, Rennet, though wholly ignorant of Greek, undertook the vindica tion of lierodotus (whose works he became acquainted with through the medium of a translation), and published in 1800 his Geographical System of Berodotus Examined and Explained, a work of unrivaled merit, displaying as it does one of the grandest combina tions of acuteness, sagacity, and research. A second edition was published in 1830. In
1811 appeared his Observations on the Topography of the Plain of Troy; and two years afterward illustrations (chiefly Geographical) of the Expedition of the Younger Gyre, and of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. After his death, which took place at Loi.don, Mar. 29, 1830, there were found among his papers several MS. works, the Investigation of the Athinlic Currents and those between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (Lond. 1832), in the composition of which book he examined the logs of a]] the ships of war and Imliamen which had traversed those seas for about 40 years previous, and reduced their observations to a general system; and A Treatise on the Comparative Geography of Western Asia, with an atlas, ancient and modern (Lond. 1831), a work of great labor and research, which had been prepared by the royal command, and the publication of which was partially defrayed at the king's expense. kennel was one of the most remarkable men of his time his works exhibit throughout the most earnest per severance and industry, sound judgment, and wonderful sagacity.