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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: To the most illustrious and honourable Sir Walter Ealeigh, Knight, Captain of the Queen's Guard, Lord Warden of the Stannaries in the Counties of Cornwall and Devon, Vice-Admiral of Devon, Robert Hues wishes lasting happiness. MOST ILLUSTRIOUS SlR, That nothing is at once brought forth, and perfected, is an observation wee may make as from other things, so in a more especial manner from Arts and Sciences. For (not to speake anything of the rest which yet have all of them in succession of times had their accessions of perfection), if wee but take the astronomicall writings of Aratus, or of Eudoxus (according to whose observations Aratus is reported by Leon- tius Mechanicus to have composed his Phsenomena), and compare the same with the later writings of Ptolomy: what eiTours and imperfections shall we meet withall ? And in the Geographicall workes of the Ancients, whether we compare them among themselves, the later with the former; or either of them with the more accurate descriptions of our Moderne Geographers: how many things shall we meet withall therein, that need either to be corrected as erroneous, or else supplied as defective ? There shall wee finde Strabo everywhere harshly censuring the extravagances of Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Polybius, and Posidonius: Authors among the Ancients of very high esteem. For as for Pytheas, Euthemeres, Antiphanes, and those Indian Histo- riographers Megasthenes, Nearchus, and Dairaachus, whose writings are stuffed with so many fabulous idle relations, he accounts them unworthy of his censure. In like manner Marinus Tyrius, however a most diligent writer, is yet hardly dealt withall by Ptolomy. And even Ptolomy himselfe, a man that for his great knowledge and experience may seem to have excelled all those that went bef...

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