PORTA-BAPT1STA, or a celebrated Neapolitan philosopher, was born about the year 1545. Attached to the study of nature from an early period of his life, he evinced an uncommon zeal for the advance ment of knowledge. Having established in his house a kind of academy, called De Secreti, he admitted only those who had made some useful discovery, or communicated some new information. By this means, he was furnished with materials for his Mogia ..Vaturalis, the first edition of which was published, as he himself assures us, when he was scarcely fifteen years old, that is, about the year 1560.
The assemblies which were held at the house of the Neapolitan philosopher, excited the jealousy of the church of Rome, by whom they were prohibited.
On the first publication of the Illagia Naturalis, it was translated into Italian, French, Spanish, and Arabic, and went through many editions in different countries. In this wonderful collection of all the curiosities in nature and art, which were known in that time, we find an accurate description of the camera obscura, and various other con trivances of great ingenuity.
Baptista Porta travelled through Italy, from which he went into France and Spain, visiting all the public libraries and learned men, and collecting all the information which Ire could obtain. When he was at Rome, he was admit ted into the Academy de Lynexi; and he became ac quainted with the celebrated Francis Paoli, from whom he obtained much curious information. He died at Naples, in 1615.
Beside the Magia )Vaturalis, of which a second edition appeared in 1590, much enlarged, he published a work, De Humana Physiognomia, to which he added a Physiog nonzia Ccicstis. lie published, also, a work, De ...Eris. Transmutationibus. llis principal mathematical wort: were his Elementa C'urvilinra, and his De Refractione °Juices, an account of which, and of his other optical labours, will be found in our article Orries.