HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY.
The history of geography falls naturally into two divisions, the first of which records the development of ideas regarding the shape and size of the earth, while the second deals with the gradual increase of definite information about the actual facts of land and water dis tribution. The conception of the earth as a flat surface, probably encircled by water, is •common to all primitive peoples. This idea, which is still held by many savage tribes, was gradually discarded as the mathematical sciences and philosophical speculation in general devel oped, and the Greeks finally succeeded in proving that the world is a globe. Aristotle is ordinarily credited with this discovery, though the Pytha goreans taught the doctrine of the rotundity of the earth long before his time. Aristotle esti mated the circumference of the globe at about 40,000 miles.
The earliest map representing the known por tion of the earth is that of the Greek Anaxi mander, who lived B.C. 610 to 546. Hecatreus, also a Greek, who lived between n.c. 550 and 475, and who had traveled extensively in Egypt, Per sia, Libya, Spain, and Italy, wrote a book de scribing these countries, and made a map improv ing and extending that of Anaximander. Thales, a Greek of Miletus, who flourished about D.C. 600, -divided the earth into five climatic zones, much as they are recognized to-day, and introduced the equator and meridians. He discovered that the plane of the ecliptic is inclined to that of the equator, and made a rough measurement of the inclination.
The real founder of scientific geography was Eratosthenes, librarian of Alexandria (c.276 195 n.c.). He made accurate measurements of the length of the sun's shadow at Alexandria, and at the first cataract of the Nile, assuming that they were on the same meridian, and thus cal culated the earth's circumference as about 25,000 miles, which is surprisingly near the actual figure.
Strabo, who was born about B.C. 60, was the first to attempt a work on general geography. His treatise consists of seventeen volumes, two of which are devoted to the world at large as an introduction, ten volumes to Europe, four to Asia, and the remaining one to Africa.
The great work of Ptolemy, the Alexandrian, who lived in the second century of our era, marked an epoch in early geographical science, and was for many centuries the paramount authority on the subject of the earth, and his map was that universally used. Still, the map contained sev eral serious errors, which had far-reaching re sults. He fell into the error of adopting the result given by Posidonius for the earth's cir cumference, and this, together with an error in the longitude of the &lades, which marked his initial meridian, resulted in bringing the west coast of Europe and Africa within 9000 miles of the east coast of Asia. It was this which induced Columbus, thirteen and a half centuries later, to voyage westward to reach the Indies. The map is constructed on a reticule of parallels and meridians, and though its errors of position and form in detail are many, it shows in comparison with earlier maps, especially that of Hecatceus, a vast extension of the known world. The advances in knowledge thus made were largely lost during the Middle Ages, when the scholastics developed the older plane-surface theory of a world, with Jerusalem as the centre of the universe. The most elaborate treatise embodying these ideas is that of Cosmas Indico pleustes, who lived in the sixth century (a translation has been published by the Hakluyt Society, London, 1899). Many specimens of me dieval cartographs, embodying these ideas, have survived, the most important of which have been reproduced by Prof. Konrad Miller of Stuttgart. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography (Lon don, 1879) ; Tozer, Ancient Geography (London, 1897) ; and Beazley, Damn of Modern Geography (London, 1897), are important works upon this phase of the subject. The modern development of ideas concerning the form and magnitude of the earth is treated in the articles on ASTRONOMY and NAVIGATION.